Remember that several factors can negatively affect backup resource consumption and speed:Ĭompression level - It is not recommended to set it to “High” (as it needs 2 CPU Cores per proxy task) or to Extreme (which needs a lot of CPU power but provides only 2-10% additional space saving). Use DISKPART as follow to change the policy: DISKPART> list disk In order to make the restore work properly, the target volume must be set back to read-write. Restoring data in Direct SANĭata restore through the SAN is possible only for thick VMDKs and usage of this mode forces Veeam Backup & Replication to restore in thick format. During the backup operations, a new volume will be visible from the Windows Disk Manager but it will never be the source LUN. On the other hand, BfSS does not require this process since only the storage array’s snapshots are presented to the proxy. The process has to be repeated for all the LUNs where a VMware vSphere datastore is created. The volume is still mounted with read-write access.įrom a backup process, point of view of the read-write access is not required and DISKPART utility can be used to force a different access method and set the LUNs where the source VMs are running to read-only: DISKPART> list disk When deploying the datamover package, Veeam Backup & Replication disables both the Windows automount feature and remove the letter assigned to previously mounted drives (automount scrub) automatically. Eliminating the risk of creating a new file system on the wrong volume (meaning the vSphere datastore) becomes key. With that being said, it is easy to understand that there might be some risks related to the Direct SAN: since the LUNs containing the source VM are visible from the disk manager of the proxy and, in some cases, the proxy is also used as repository server, managing both local and SAN volume may be prone to human mistakes. In the Direct SAN method, the proxy must be zoned with the source storage and the LUNs containing the virtual machines to be protected have to be mapped, whereas with the BfSS only the zoning is required.

From an infrastructure point of view, the difference is mainly related to the way the proxy interacts with the source storage array. Physical proxy can be used with two different transport modes: DirectSAN and Backup from Storage Snapshots (BfSS). However, in certain circumstances there might be some additional tweaks one may take into account to optimize the infrastructure. This site uses Just the Docs, a documentation theme for Jekyll.īuilding a VMware vSphere proxy is a straight forward process that does not require any particular special care: it is a matter of few clicks in the Veeam Backup & Replication UI to add it. Restoring VMs to an HPE 3PAR with thin disks.

Backup Repository HA using Windows Storage Replica.

Veeam exchange backup best practices