topic Nimble hf40 snapshots in Array Performance and Data Protection

Nimble hf40 snapshots

Jeff1967 — Wed, 31 May 2023 16:01:01 GMT

Dear all,

We want to stop thedaily snapshots on our NImble HF40

We want veeam do the snapshotting on storage level, this way we hope to win time during backupping our vm`s.

How does HPE / Nimble engineers think about this sugestion,..?

Do or Don`t do,...??

thank in advance for all the reply

Jeff

Re: Nimble hf40 snapshots

Sheldon Smith — Wed, 31 May 2023 13:53:24 GMT

What is your volume collection(s)' current schedule and retention count policy?

Be aware even if you stop the volume collection schedules and delete the snapshots, the array will still make a hidden hourly snapshot of the volumes keeping one.

As the array uses reference pointers to the data, a snapshot is just pointing to all the sections on the disks making up the volume at the time of the snapshot. The array will do what it can to not duplicate the data on the physical disks.
Veeam is a very good backup system. This does not negate the fact that with an array-based snapshot, you can very quickly bring a (recent) snapshot on-line (make a clone) and use a host's tools to dig something up.

I deal extensively with the HPE dHCI solution which is VMware-based. Having a few days' worth of (hourly?) crash-consistent snapshots gives the option to make a clone of a datastore (VMware formatted volume) and then copy out a VM's virtual disk image or an entire VM. Or even promoting a snapshot if an entire volume needs to be restored.
Something like Veeam is still desirable if what is needed is one or more files from within the virtual disk image.

I would look in the array's management GUI to see how much additional storage is being used by the snapshots. You mentioned daily snapshots; you may want to edit the volume collection(s) and reduce the number of snapshots retained. I suggest keeping a few days' worth to give you the option to leverage a snapshot for cloning or promoting a volume.

There is no problem with having both the array and Veeam make snapshots. If the volume collection is using application synchronization, you may need to look at shifting the times of the volcoll snapshots so they don't collide with any application synchronization Veeam may be using. Or possibly disable application synchronization within the volume collection altogether.

Re: Nimble hf40 snapshots

Jeff1967 — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 06:31:52 GMT

volume collection ( 50 volumes )

schedule daily , every day

retain 3 recovery points

replication not configured

does this answer your question, and does this change your thoughts about this question,...

best regards

Jeff

Re: Nimble hf40 snapshots

giladzzz — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 07:45:23 GMT

Sheldon is right you can use Veeam as well as Nimble snapshots. Also Veeam recognizes Nimble snapshots

so the simplest way to recover even from Nimble snapshots is by using Veeam.

Also you can have Veeam manage all the Nimble snapshots by configuring a Veeam backup

using Nimble repository (snapshot only). which does a backup by Veeam that only creates snapshots on Nimble.

so there are a lot of options.

Regards

Give a KUDO if this helps

Re: Nimble hf40 snapshots

Mahesh202 — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 07:49:30 GMT

Hi Jeff

Backup jobs are commonly configured with a VM as the thing to be backed up. This is in contrast to Nimble snapshots, which use the volume as the selected backup object. Veeam has a few components that will always be present while working with Nimble:

When a Veeam backup operation executes, everything is coordinated by the Veeam server. It will do the real data backup via proxy servers and then store the backed-up data in a repository.

Veeam can only completely integrate with the Nimble array when using VMFS datastores.

Hope this helps.!!

Regards
Mahesh.