VMware backups - HotAdd vs SAN Transport

[LozBC]

Hi,

We have the VRAY licences for VMware and was wondering what others are doing with regards for backups?

We have 150 VM machines on 5 hosts on fibre storage...

Our Backup Exec server is a physical server with fibre connectivity.

From my testing I can see that on an individual VM, SAN Transport is taking about half the time than using HotAdd for both initial backup to an empty dedupe folder, and the second backup (Where the majority of the source has already been captured).

However what I am wondering is (Particuarly using dedupe), do people use SAN Transport with multiple jobs running in parallel (Up to the concurrent usage limit of the dedupe folder) or do they use HotAdd and utilize multiple HotAdd backup proxies to the dedupe device?

I am trying to work out what would be best?

Thanks

[Sush---]

Hello there,

    My recommendation would be running the backups directly to the Dedupe folder. As you can see it already giving you good results while using the SAN Transport mode.

Thanks,

-Sush...

[teiva-boy]

SAN is the brute-force method.  Hot-Add is scalable when architected right...  It really depends on your scheduling, and infrastructure available to know which is better.  

Personally, SAN transport is simpler to maintain, and you have a small environment that SAN will work fine.

[Sush---]

Hello there,

    Looking at the Help documentation I confirmed the following:

Hotadd - Use virtual disk files from the Backup Exec server on the virtual machine

This means that for HotAdd backup your Backup Exec server (Media server) should be Virtual Machine. But as you have mentioned that Backup Exec Server is Physical server I doubt you can use Hotadd backups. So for your scenario best option would be to use SAN transport mode.

Thanks,

-Sush...

[Colin_Weaver]

As far as I am aware HotAdd is a method for transporting the snapshot form the datastore into a VM that is running as a media server and SAN is the method for transporting the snaphot to a physical media server.

As such if you are using Hot Add on a physical server is it really doing Hotadd or is it falling back on NBD (which would be slower than SAN in most environments)

[LozBC]

Hi,

I think maybe you all misunderstand me...

I am trying to compare:

SAN Transport using single physical server attached to fibre infrrastructure

And

HotAdd using CASO and a proxy Backup Exec media server VM backing up to a shared deduplication folder hosted on the physical server

Thanks

[Colin_Weaver · Accepted solution]

I think this in effect boils down to for any given environment one option may work faster or slower than the other.

You are not really comparing like for like as Deduplication inside a VM can be affacted by how Vmware is managing performance related hardware access between systems (and Dedup is very resource intensive) Other components of the environemnt will also have affacts on performance. (i.e. speed of network link between the virtual MMS and the shared dedupl folder on the CASO etc)

With regards the multiple jobs running at same time - you probably needs some real world comments from forum members that are not Symantec support staff to get some idea of their experiences - it will work ( at least for SAN mode)

Note: I am not sure we get many customers using Hot-Add (we certainly don't see many support cases for it)