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Backup Exec - VMware / Deduplication Best Practices

maxashton
Level 2

Hi folks,

I'm running backup for medium size business' server environment, and am encountering a few problems with backups to Deduplicated datastores.

Basically, I'm trying to find out what the "Best practice" recommendations are. I won't go into detail about the problems just yet. Instead, I'll lay out what I'm working with and see how the community would recommend I set it up.


So, we have approx 70 production VMs, most of which need to be backed up.

The media server lives in the VMware infrastructure as well.

The backup target is a low cost iSCSI SAN, there's one LUN configured for use as a deduplicated datastore, and one smaller LUN configured for standard backups.

All the ethernet is aggregated, so there's plenty of backup.

I've seen up to 4GB per minute backing up to the standard store. Deduplcated backups are at best 1.3, but usually below 1gb per minute.

How would you guys set this up? Is a VM ok? Should I be recommending a physical server?

Thanks in advance!

Max

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

Sorry Craig but it is physical device (library/tape/USB disk) access from inside a VM that is not supported and as we do support the HotAdd transport which will ONLY work inside a VM we obviously do support a media server being inside a VM.

With regards to the OPs issue

 

Deduplication of VM's uses the CPU and RAM of the media server because the remote agent performing the work is the on the media server itself (Client Side Dedup does not apply to VMs) this can obviously have an effect on performance which being virtualized may make worse as you are potentailly sharing a very intensive activity with other VMs running on the same host

I am also concened by your description of the iSCSI solution as we have seen issues with cost effective (i.e cheap) iSCSI solutions having problems when used a a Deduplictaion target - admittedly the solutions I am thinking of were software based iSCSI running on a host operating system and a bespoke NAS that offers iSCSI should be more reliable. Basically whatever is used as deduplication storage needs to have fast and reliable read and write performance.

 

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5 REPLIES 5

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

Hi,

 

Using BE installed on a VM is strictly not supported at all...Symantec are only obliged to give you limited support, so using a physical server is preferred, and recommended.

The link below will take you to the BE 2012 best practices...check them out for more information:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO74626

Thanks! 

maxashton
Level 2

Thanks for your quick response, CraigV.

The support representatives I've had on the phone haven't mentioned any issue with supporting the platform with the media centre installed in a VM.

I've not been able to find anything in the referenced documents about this kind of deployment. I'll scour it again.

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

Sorry Craig but it is physical device (library/tape/USB disk) access from inside a VM that is not supported and as we do support the HotAdd transport which will ONLY work inside a VM we obviously do support a media server being inside a VM.

With regards to the OPs issue

 

Deduplication of VM's uses the CPU and RAM of the media server because the remote agent performing the work is the on the media server itself (Client Side Dedup does not apply to VMs) this can obviously have an effect on performance which being virtualized may make worse as you are potentailly sharing a very intensive activity with other VMs running on the same host

I am also concened by your description of the iSCSI solution as we have seen issues with cost effective (i.e cheap) iSCSI solutions having problems when used a a Deduplictaion target - admittedly the solutions I am thinking of were software based iSCSI running on a host operating system and a bespoke NAS that offers iSCSI should be more reliable. Basically whatever is used as deduplication storage needs to have fast and reliable read and write performance.

 

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

Thanks for the clarification Colin!

maxashton
Level 2

Thanks for the great feedback, everyone. I appreciate it.