Netbackup 7.5.0.5 and VMware SAN transport

[Anne-Vivien]

Hi all,

I've inherited and existing NBU 7.5 environment.  Since we're running vSphere 5.1, I upgraded the infrastructure to NBU 7.5.0.5.  I am having various issues from extremely slow performance using SAN transport mode to conflicting information on how best to present LUNs to the VMware backup host.

I have experience with Netbackup and VMware, in the past in order to use the SAN transport mode all that was required was to present the volumes where the data stores resided to the VMware  backup host.  The volumes had to be presented offline to the Windows VMware backup host.  I just came across the following article:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&pmv=print&viewlocale=&id=TECH183072

It mentions that the volumes need to be configured to be online and presented as read only from the storage SAN.  Read/write would only be required for SAN restores.  My question is, which is correct?  

1. Present volumes to VMware backup host as read/write, but have disks appear as offline on Windows (automount disable, automount scrub)

2. Present volumes to VMware backup host as read-online and have the disks appear as online.

Any clarification on this is greatly appreciated.

The other issue I am running into is that the backup performance when using SAN transport is horrible.  The last VMware backup averaged about 4-5MB/sec when using SAN transport mode.  I configured the policy to use NBD and performance jumped up to 30-40MB/sec.  Clearly something is horribly wrong.  

Thanks in advanced!

Anne-Vivien

[Dyneshia]

For general VM-ware performance issues please reveiw :

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH191183  - After upgrading to NetBackup 7.5.0.x, VMware Backups are slower than expected

and

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/sites/default/files/IA%20B29%20-%20Best%20Prac%20Backup%20%2...

In addition, in your backup selection, are you using the display name instead of the host name ?

Do you have any non-VM backups using the same network that complete in a timely fashion ?

Here is a really good forum thread with a few differnt suggestions.

[Mark_Solutions · Accepted solution]

On a 2008 VMWare backup host the disks can be off line for backup purposes but if you want to run a restore over the SAN they have to be marked as online

Read only should be OK for backups but you would need read/write for restores

My customer leave their disks as read / write i believe but only mark them onnline when they need to do a SAN restore

Hope this helps