SAN Transport mode in Hyper-V !!!

San transport mode is a feature of VMware.

For Hyper-V if you want the backup traffic to go through SAN, you have 2 options.

Option 1 is to make the Hyper-V nodes SAN Clients. You will need to be running Nbu 7.5.0.4 and have a FT Media Server.

Option 2 is to use the storage hardware based offhost alternate client backup method. Basically you take a hardware based snapshot/split-mirror of the Hyper-V LUNs inside the SAN storage, then mount them to a Netbackup media server to be backed up directly via SAN, lan free.

Option 2a is similar to option 2, where you do the exact same thing inside the guest OS, and not on the Hyper-V level. So if you have a LUN that is passthrough-mounted to a guest OS, you can offhost backup this LUN. In this case, the hardware VSS provider is setup inside the guest OS and not on the Hyper-V host.

Information on setting up Options 2 and 2a are available in:
NetBackup Snapshot Client 7.5 Administrator’s Guide (For how to setup offhost alternate client backups in Netbackup)
NetBackup (tm) 7 Snapshot Client Compatibility List (For hardware based VSS providers + Hyper-V agent compatibility info)

appreciate your response.The first option is difficult to deal with at this time, but the second i believe it is closer .I need more time to read more about these options .

Regards,

You will have to setup the Netbackup app_cluster feature for that to work properly (command only).

It will work as SAN media server to backup only it's own data.right? but I didnt get it why I need this feature in case if I have only one hyper v host?

Regards,

There is always the 3rd option where you simply install a Nbu Media Server in every Hyper-V node that backs up data to a shared storage, such as a tape library on SAN. You will have to setup the Netbackup app_cluster feature for that to work properly (command only).

If you don't mind a little bit of lan traffic you can also choose to do away with all that SAN stuff and just enable client-side-deduplication on your Hyper-V nodes. That is if you are using one of those Netbackup deduplication options (MSDP, OST hardware, Nbu Appliance, PureDisk).

Option 2 is to use the storage hardware based offhost alternate client backup method. Basically you take a hardware based snapshot/split-mirror of the Hyper-V LUNs inside the SAN storage, then mount them to a Netbackup media server to be backed up directly via SAN, lan free.

do you have any direct steps to do this, because I can see this option in the manual: but exactly I dint get it what needed from the SAN team to do or the windows Hyper-V admin!

please find attached

Regards,

It is actually all written in the Snapshot Client Administrator’s Guide. You will really just have to read through it. I guess you could skip the parts that are not about your specific brand of SAN storage.

Offhost backup is relative easy to setup from Netbackup's side (Not many clicks really). It is the preparation that requires effort. You will typically have to work with your SAN storage vendor for copy-on-write or split-mirror type snapshot configurations, what they do and don't support, their best practices on doing this type of backup, their support policies, whether you are required to buy extra licenses for this SAN feature, what their host based VSS providers (or non-VSS providers on *nix) requirements are, whether some SAN software agents and CLI components will have to be installed on to which hosts (just the Hyper-V? Or the alt client too? Or the Nbu server too?), and what their OS compatibility lists are, where to store the copy-on-write blocks, when and how to sync/re-sync the splitted mirror, extra storage capacity requirements to your SAN, performance impact to the hosts and SAN for using snapshots, etc.

The actual "alternate client" is usually designated to be a Netbackup media server. This just means this is where the snapshot will be SAN mounted. The media server is a good place to mount it because you then just back it up to storage units directly attached to the same media server.

Thanks , I believe that I need some times to go through the snapshot manual.Appreciate.