BE2010 Backup Host - Physical or Virtual

[AndersG]

Hi!

Assuming fast hardware, FC SAN and LTO drives, is there any (measureable) advantage of running the Backup server as a physical machine, as compared to a virtual one?

[AmolB]

Its easy to configure backup devcies(tapes drives) on the physical machine compared to virtual

machine.

[Colin_Weaver]

Almost all access from inside Virtual Machines to physical Tape devices and libraries is not supported by VMware or Hyper-V envvironments as such you should use Physical unless you knwo your configuration is supported (You can use Virtual if you only intend to use disk targets.

Also note: DeDuplication requires a lot of resources (CPU, RAM, Disk Space etc) so would probably be better not sharing with VMWare processses or other VM's and using a very well specified physical machine.

[AndersG]

OK. Reason I ask is because customer is running their backup server virtual today and is planning an upgrade to BE2010. Ie it works well today.

[ZeRoC00L]

Colin,

Directly connect devices are supported on Vmware with VMDirectPath.

Offcourse you looze the flexiblility with vmotion, but it is supported. As the topic starter notes that he is using a FC tape unit it will be no problem as you can configure the VM to see the FC tape unit.

[CraigV]

...unless you put an Adaptec card into your ESX hosts, BE won't connect to your drives at all.

It's a requirement to run BE as a VM.

I also think for you to make use of the SAN-based disks you'd need to enable NPIV.

[AndersG]

Yes, I know about the Adaptec requirement. You also have to type cryptic commands to activate it, but that is no big deal in the great scheme of things. The tapedrive in this case is connected through fibrechannel.

[teiva-boy]

Physical almost ALWAYS performs better.  It comes down to performance, and where you want to make a compromise.  If you can't affordable a dedicated physical box, you are doing it wrong.

[AndersG]

"Physical almost ALWAYS performs better."

Numbers? 1%? 10%? Has anyone done any serious benchmarking here?

[KristofPoppe]

If you can manage to see and use your backup-devices (tapedrives,...) it is easy to use the software on a virtual environment. We had some issues with recognizing and IBM tape library and Symantec didn't support it in VMWARE. (FC library was represented as an ISCSI device) After some tweaking we managed to get it up and running and now using the virtualized server without any problems for more than 4 months.

[ZeRoC00L]

I have never seen any benchmarks about this.

As it will depend a lot on your environment you can ask yourself how usefull they will be.

It all depends on a lot of variables, SAN, iSCSI/FC, Vmware Version, number of ESX hosts, number of VMs, usage, etc.....

You see, lot of variables.

If you are planning a virtual Backup Exec server, I would suggest to install one with 60 day trial license and see if it is suitable for your situation.

[AndersG]

"If you are planning a virtual Backup Exec server, I would suggest to install one with 60 day trial license and see if it is suitable for your situation."

Customer is currently running it as a VM. Older version of BE. Question was if there is a significant advantage running it physical. Significant enough to outweigh the disadvantages.

[CraigV]

...think about it. In a VM environment, ALL VMs contend for resources. That means if you assign multiple CPUs to a VM for instance, it has to wait for x-amount of CPUs to be ready to execute. Add into that issues if you don't reserve CPU/RAM reservations, and you could have a bloated VM environment.

In this case, physical is better...also less requirements needed to connect to hardware, and less configuration in order to do so.

IF you can go for physical, it is a big +. If not, a VM will work, provided you're following the requirements set out.

As for benchmarks...how long is a piece of string? My VM environment might run better on the VNX5300 we're putting in, but slower than someone else's environment running on an EVA6400 for example. It just depends on your set up and configuration.

[jed83]

This is an interesting discussion.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the strain something like this can put on a VMWare/Hyper-V cluster.

I am planning a deployment now and I wouldn't consider going Virtual with my backup solution because of the scale we are working with virtually. It would put too much strain on important VMs and services that need the maximum out of the shared resources they can get.

If you are happy that other VMs in the cluster won't suffer because of this and that the interfaces needed are supported, then it's a matter of easy preference at that point.

Hope this helps.

Jed

[CraigV]

Well, yes and no. It's not quite so clear-cut.

To my knowledge, Hyper-V doesn't support connections to physical tape drives, so that is already a limit (please correct me if I am wrong).

With ESX, you need that Adaptec card. If your backup VM vMotions, there is no way it carries that library with it. It has to be manually unplugged, and then plugged into the correct host.

I'm not sure if you can present an FC-attached library to a VM using NPIV in ESX, but you can do this with disk, which makes B2D more of a possibility...

[Colin_Weaver]

Symantec have not officially tested any physical drive or library access within virtualized media servers  using Backup Exec 12.5 or 2010 (all revisions) as such we do not certify this type of configuration - Hence I stand by the the various recommendations that if you intend to use tape devices with Backup Exec then the media server should NOT be virtualized.

[Ahmad_Abdelhady]

May be an old discusstion but i have a question,I will implement BE2010 R3 on a VM running on hyperV host and the BE server will use deduplication option running on the VM and also i will backup hyperV host's and i need this VM to see the tape library which is attached to HyperV host to backup direct to tape.....,

Is this solution is accepted or Not ,,,,,Please advice ,

[teiva-boy]

No tape access in HyperV from a VM, this is a HyperV limitation.  VMware can do this however with the right hardware.