BE2012 restore of VM (vmware) through 10gbps nic

[Lohenthal]

Hello all,

Our site has a vsphere 5.1 infrastructure and  backup VMs wit the SAN transport. Jobs are ok with  good performances.

However, SAN transport isn't available  for restores. So we use a 10gbps link : the BE 2012 sp2 server  has a 10gbps nic, and the ESXi's in the vsphere cluster too.

When i try to restore VMs I get a maximum bandwidth of about 850mbps (just as if we had a 1gbps nic).

On the BE server and the ESXi the uplink is well seen as 10gbps full duplex.

If I try to copy a large file  from my BE server to a windows VM I get a throughput of about 5gbps which is normal. So I think the network  is not  the problem.

Is there a limit in BE 2012 which prevents from using a 10gbps bandwidth ?

Have people here already used BE 2012 to backup and restore  VMs with a 10gbps NIC and what were the results in terms of performance ?

Thanks a lot.

[lmosla]

Hello,  Are the restores from tape or disk?  Do you have antivirus running on the server? If you do try a test restore with it turned off.

[Lohenthal]

Thanks for your answer Imosia

The restores are from disk (New EMC VNX bay with 15K SAS and SSD cache) with no antivirus on the server.

Read you soon :)

[Lohenthal]

Well, nobody tried to restore a VM through a 10gbps link ?

[ZeRoC00L]

Are you restoring through a vCenter server ?

And is that server also equiped with at 10Gb nic and connected to the 10Gb network ?

[CraigV]

The OP has stated that the VC and ESX hosts have 10GbE NICs, and that the uplinks on the switches show them as connected at 10Gb as well!

Thanks!

[ZeRoC00L]

The OP does not state that the VC server has a 10GB nic.

Thanks!

[Lohenthal]

Actually, I'm restoring directly to the ESXi for  this test. Each ESXi has a 10gb NIC, the vCenter is a VM.

[CraigV]

...does the VC have a 10Gb vNIC? Have you tried to restore through the VC at all?

Thanks!

[Lohenthal]

Oh sorry I remember now : I restore through de vCenter (actually I can not restore directly to the ESXi, BE tells me that it is managed by a vCenter and that I must select it as the redirection target. Then only I can select the destination ESXi 

The VC is a VM with a vmxnet 3 driver at 10Gb.

At the physical Level all the traffic (vmkernels, VM networks) is hold  by 2 10Gb NICs

Thanks.

[CraigV]

...OK, so my assumption you had a full 10GbE environment is correct!

Have you checked thr traffic on the VC's vNIC during the restore? If there is an AV have you disabled it during the restore?

Thanks!

[Lohenthal]

I have  no AV  on the BE server. I guess there is one on the vCenter. I'm going to connect to the customer's infratructure in a few hours to check.

As far as I can understand your precious contributions, you assume that a traffic using more than 1Gbps  is theorically possible in BE, correct ?

Thanks a lot

[CraigV]

...there should be no reason NOT to use the full 10Gb available!

Thanks!

[Lohenthal]

I tried to isolate the problem.

- It seems that the NBD transport uses to the "NFC (network file copy) protocol" used by ESXi's when we upload or download files between vsphere clients and datastores, over port TCP 902.

Through the vsphere client :

- I tried to download a  2,3 GB ISO file from a datastore to my physical BE server  with the same result as usual : throughputs < 1gbps

- Then tried to download the same ISO on a VM from a datastore presented to the ESXi host (I think in this case  the traffic implies only the vSwitch, and no physical device) : same result.

So, the problem seems to be in the vmware side and i'm investigating in that direction. But does it mean that we would have no capability of improving restore rates with 10gbps uplink (if unfortunately, by design, NFC performances were poor and capped above 1gbps). As far as I know there's no short term plan to allow restores with SAN transport mode

Thanks a lot.