2008 R2 VM Clsuter using iSCSI LUN (on Hyper-v Cluster)

[shaji]

HI !!

I've a 2 node vm cluster (2008 r2) using iscsi disk.
I've 6-7 iscsi disk presented to both these vm and used as cluster resource to build a SQL Cluster.

I would like to backup both these VM's using Flashbackup-Windows.

Is this supported ? Will all the iscsi disk get backedup using this method ?(I prefer to restore it as VM)

If not what is best possible way to have a host leavel backup for these two nodes.

I'm not using any Hardware snapshot.

Kindly advice.

[V4]

VMWare SAN transport mode supports both FC and iSCSI as transport method

iSCSI uses TCP stack to flow the data. If you have ample amount of bandwidth or ethernet pipe to transport data. you may continue use Flashbackup windows policy for VMware. If NBU is 7.1 or 7.5 you can protect VMDK and SQL logs purging can also be done without having to configure SQL backup policy

Refer Admin Guide for further details

[Marianne]

I initially mis-read opening post as well....

OP is using Hyper-V, not VMWare....

[shaji]

I don't use use VMware , I've the Vm's hosted on a 6 node Hyper-V clsuter

[V4]

Oops i missed it .

Nevermind we can work out on this as well. Hmm Lets see your moto is to protect SQL VMs which are clustered with the help of iSCSI instead of expensive FC

iSCSI is amazing and is cheaper then FC (management is also costly) Though it has some cons, one is, it uses the same TCP stack as primary layer.

Generaly for iSCSI based transport Symantec recommends it should be having atleast 10Gb ethernet provision to Host Server , So there must not be impact to your VM traffic and backup traffic.

Eventually Network has been always a one of major bottleneck in Virtualization

We don't know what version of NBU are you running, however presuming you are on 7.1/7.5 you would be easily able to protect VMs without any issues. If either of VMs are using CSV too , do not worry NetBackup supports it as well. However at any point in time only 1 VM backup can be ran as it's limitation from MS end not NetBackup ;)

If you would protect VMs using Flash backup policy Transaction logs would not be truncated (To get this benefit over VM protection , upgrade Netbackup Master and Media (on Hyper-V host) to 7.5 release

There Hyper-V and VMware has been newly added  as policy type, You can also specify timeout values for how longer NBU should wait on CSV volumes before initiating another VM backup using same CSV

Hope this clears sort of  :) Let us know if this helps