Backing up SAN 'through' a hyper v server?

[Mr_Wiki]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone has come across this problem.

On site we have an iSCSI SAN that was backed up via a physical box as an attached drive that is now due for replacement, normal through put on this would be around 1,450.00MB/Min.

I wanted to replace this with a VM (Hyper-V) however the through put on the attached SAN drive is only around 380MB/Min, around 1/3rd slower. I cant see why this would be, has anyone got some suggestions/tips/hints to point me in the right direction?

On a side note direct file access to the SAN drive is as quick on the Virtual machine as it is on the old physical box. so sure this is a backup exec issue.  

[SaurabhK]

One explanation is that, if the device is now hooked upto to the VM as an attached storage, *Pass Through Disks* is a performance beater with Backup Exec and Hyper-V Backup Exec doesnt really support this.

So file copy from the VM to the SAN disk via windows is ok? can you time about a gig of flat file data? try NTBACKUP, there should not be an issue unless it is enviornmental, but we'll find out soon...

Hope this explains it, kindly mark as solved if this helps.

[Mr_Wiki]

Hi, the disk is not a pass through disk, just a normal 'fixed' disk on a iscsi san.

I tested copying 20GB of data from both the physical box (with the attached SAN drive) and the virtual box (with the attached SAN drive) to my PC across the network and times were about the same.

[Mr_Wiki]

Let me ask this another way.

What is the recommended way of backing up an ISCSI SAN (without using the add-on san option)  in a virtual environment.

[Mr_Wiki]

Sorry if i was unclear. I am running hyper-V not VMware.

[SaurabhK]

Sorry about that :) I confused my self with VM WARE.. Anyways, SAN-SSO looks like the best solution to me, no other way I am afraid...

[Mr_Wiki]

Hi, I don't think that SAN-SSO is compantable with our Dell PS4000.