ISCSI setup BE2010

[Fmorrison01]

Hi All

Need a whitepaper on mapping through VMFS luns through to a physical backup exec box.

This is so we can use the vmware agent and back using san transport mode.

Searched high and low and cant seem to find anything

[sksujeet]

VMFS is virtual machin file system and used to store virtual machines disk images. RDM(Raw device mapping) is the way to access the LUN on the SAN.

If you want to backup the vm on you ESX with the san transport mode then you should make sure your physical machine can see the LUN on which vms resides.

You either have to ask you storage team to zone them in one group so your esx machines and BE server can see them.

[ZeRoC00L]

Make sure to run these commands before granting access to the VMFS luns:

diskpart
automount disable
automount scrub
exit

This will prevent windows from writing a signature to disk and destroying your VMFS volume !

[Colin_Weaver]

You need some form of hardware or software iSCSI initiator installed on the Media Server to connect to the datasore volume, and the media server must be a physical computer. VMware did something to the vStorage API that means that even though logically iSCSI should not really care if it is physical or virtual, the API knows if you are in a VM and will fail the SAN  mode.

[Fmorrison01]

Thanks for the feedback .,

Im aware on what VMFS is and how to map the luns..

However as i stated i was after a whitepaper best practises doco from Symantec for mounting these luns,

Maybe theres a whitepaper\best practises for san transport mode?

E.g

A.Does symantec have recommendations on how the ISCSI intitor on the bes server should be?

B.Should you use two NICS or one?

C.Jumbo frames on or off ?

[teiva-boy]

A:  Symantec doesn't care how you mount your LUN's and does not make recommendations as such.  You should be talking to your SAN vendor for best practices.

B:  It depends on how your backup jobs are structured, how fast your disk read speed is, etc.

C:  It depends.  You need to test and benchmark to verify.  

Most if not all of your questions are best pitted with your SAN vendor as they have tuning guides, config best practices, and can tell you which initiator performs better and what version.

As far as I'm aware there is nothing specific for SAN transport, only VMware backup and even that is generalized.

[Fmorrison01]

Keep your shirt on, So this is the official stance from Symantec is it?

All I asked for was there a whitepaper and I listed a few question, as examples  .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EG

Now a simple answer would be “no there isn’t a white paper”  Now is that to hard? 

As for talking to the “San vendor “ they don’t have a whitepaper on mapping VMFS luns through on a windows box for Symantec backup exec to use ?

Why would they Its a not there product?  i have the whitepaper from them for mapping luns just not in this type of config

The only reason these luns are even mapped through is for Backup exec to use

[teiva-boy]

And Symantec historically hasn't documented the SAN mapping steps..  As it's a VMware thing and not a Symantec step.  Read up on VCB, it was first introduced there.

I still go back to you're looking in the wrong place for info based on your questions.

[Ken_Putnam]

So this is the official stance from Symantec is it?

How do you get that from teiva-boy's response

Do you see anything to indicate that he works for Symantec (like a banner that says "Technical Support" or "Symantec Employee" for example?)

[Fmorrison01]

No i just asked the question

So this is the official stance from Symantec is it?  

All i wanted to know was there any documentation .

There isnt any documenation from Symantec and thats fine.

I have all the VCB documentation and i have the san vendors documentation, was just asking if there was any symantec documentation.

But it would seem that to get a simple No is far to hard .

[John_Harkins]

wow, chill out man :)

we are here to help you with our best efforts.