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Configure off-host SAN based VM backups using 5220

ESM_Admin
Level 4
Partner

Hello folks,

I understand how to configure a VMware Policy using vStorage API and making 5220 as a backup host and putting in VCENTER credentials.

My question is about zoning the datastores to the appliance.

In order to do san based backups, my datastores are on a SAN.

1. What do I need to do to ensure the appliance traffic goes over SAN?

2. How to do I check if the datastores are being seen by the appliance correctly.

3. Can I zone all the datastores on a single HBA port or split it between HBA ports and HBA cards?

4. What if I have datastore clusters....is the method of zonig them be any different than if they were non-clustered datastores?

 

Thanks a bunch.

 

ESM

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Mark_Solutions
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified

1. Ensure your VMWare policy is set to use SAN transport method only on the VMWare tab - if it cannot pass data across the SAN it will fail so you will know that it is not seeing them correctly

2. From the appliance command menu (CLISH) go to Manage - Fibre Channel and type Scan. This scans the fibre for anything that has been added / zoned. Then type Show ... this shows you what the appliance can see (all of your datastire LUNS) - remember to not only zone your datastore lUNS but map / mask then to the appliances if you storage works that way as the appliance needs to see it datastore volumes

3. You could do that but it may be a large loading and when backups run they have to share that bandwidth - if you had to do this it would be best to restrict the number of jobs that can run - Master Server host properties - Resource Limit

4. As pointed out multi-pathing is not supported - this is a vSphere limitation and should be resolved in the future - I do have customers who do this and do span them across multiple HBAs - it works fine but does write a LOT of messages to its logs about it and has also been know to cause memory issues so the occasional reboot is handy to keep the appliance running nicely if you do have to do this!

Hope this helps

View solution in original post

2 REPLIES 2

Mouse
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

Couple of answers:

1. You may want to check "SAN" transport leaving other checkboxes unchecked in the policy configuration. This will guarantee backup will go via SAN or fail otherwise.

2. NBU Appliances do not support multipathing to VMFS volumes, so you may want to manually balance load across HBAs leveraging zoning and lun masking

3. This comes down to VMFS that is the same, you need NBU 7.5 to use them, though

 

Hope this helps

Mark_Solutions
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified

1. Ensure your VMWare policy is set to use SAN transport method only on the VMWare tab - if it cannot pass data across the SAN it will fail so you will know that it is not seeing them correctly

2. From the appliance command menu (CLISH) go to Manage - Fibre Channel and type Scan. This scans the fibre for anything that has been added / zoned. Then type Show ... this shows you what the appliance can see (all of your datastire LUNS) - remember to not only zone your datastore lUNS but map / mask then to the appliances if you storage works that way as the appliance needs to see it datastore volumes

3. You could do that but it may be a large loading and when backups run they have to share that bandwidth - if you had to do this it would be best to restrict the number of jobs that can run - Master Server host properties - Resource Limit

4. As pointed out multi-pathing is not supported - this is a vSphere limitation and should be resolved in the future - I do have customers who do this and do span them across multiple HBAs - it works fine but does write a LOT of messages to its logs about it and has also been know to cause memory issues so the occasional reboot is handy to keep the appliance running nicely if you do have to do this!

Hope this helps