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VM backups using SAN, not LAN - can it be done?

TGillispie
Level 4
Partner

Using BUE 2010 R3, with V-Ray (if necessary), can I backup VMware guests using SAN-attached shared storage?  In other words, I want BUE to be reading the VMware guest snapstop via a SAN connection rather than across the LAN.

Related to this is whether I can use a Windows remote agent (RAWS?) to do the moving of VMware guest snapstops from SAN attached shared storage to an OST device?  I know RAWS (sorry if I'm using the wrong term) can do direct writes to the backup target using OST - my question is whether the same RAWS agent can pull the snapstop of a VMware guest being backed up from shared, SAN-attached storage.  I realize that the machine the RAWS agent is running on may need to be a VMware guest in order to get the SAN-attached storage through ESX.

Thanks.

4 REPLIES 4

Sublaner
Level 4

Don't see why not. I've been testing BUE Backup-to-disk (B2D) folders on an iSCSI target with the idea of getting away from SMB/CIFS targets, and it works great. No, our buget does not include anyting as fancy as a real SAN, but iSCSI is a SAN / block-level protocol... I've both duplicated local B2D backups to the iSCSI storage, and backed up to the network device and duplicated back to the local disk. The backups are portable between backup servers to restore from alternate locations.

Not sure what you mean in your second paragraph - I'm using BE 2010 R3 with RAWS (Remote Agent for WIndows Servers) on my Server 2008 guest VMs, and the AVVI (Agent for VWware Virtual Infreastructure) to directly backup the guest VMs. Other agents provide granular restore of various components (AD, Exchange, SQL). RAWS/AVVI with the Symantec Volume Snapshot Service (BeVSS provider) snaps the VM before backing up the vmdk files... but now I'm getting in over my head.

I'm testing with a Netgear RaedyNAS Pro, logo certified VMware Ready and Windows Server 2008 R2 (as a virtualization platform) and officially supports the Symantec RALUS Agent.

Hope some of that helps.

teiva-boy
Level 6

When configuring the VMware backups, your choices are as follows:

SAN

NBD

NBDSSL

HotAdd

SAN is well SAN.  NBD or Network Based Disk, is LAN based backups.  Backups will go from VMFS, and copied to your storage target, that can be disk, tape, or OST device.

 

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

SAN Query = yes - as long as LUN for Datastore is also presented to your Physical Backup Exec Media server

With regards RAWS and OST/DeDup Devices - within a VMware environment its is the RAWS process on the Media server itself that is responsible for the backup of the VM (via the vStorage API). The remote agent inside a VM is responsible for gathering the metadata for the GRT capability and is not directly responsbile for the backup. As such wherever the OST/Dedup target is, the data will always go via the media server.

If your media server is inside a VM, then you can'tuse SAN Transport but can use Hot Add. This might however limit your storage device accessibility as you want write to tape or USB via passthrough with a media server inside a VM.

Sush---
Level 6
Employee Accredited Certified

Refer to this technote

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH155831 : How to backup using SAN transport mode with Backup Exec 2010 and ESX 4.0-4.1

With Backup Exec 2010 R3 fully updated even ESX 5.0 is supported.

 

Thanks,

-Sush...