Nimble and Veeam snapshot conflicts

[trichert98]

We are in the final process of evaluating Nimble to replace our Compellent.  A concern I have right now is that we use, and love Veeam for backups.  I'm concerned that the helper esxi snapshots from veeam are going to conflict with the vcenter snapshots nimble will use on volumes where I want consistent snapshots.

Thoughts?  Comments ?  Thank you in advance !

[J Benway]

I run veeam and nimble here. I don't have them running at the same time (different snap schedules) and I haven't had any issues.

hope that helps.

[trichert98]

Not really .. in most of my cases it is impossible to not have them run at the same time.  A backup window will take several hours, so if you are running hourly snaps, they are going to conflict. 

[rshekar42]

Todd,

Are you looking to enable both Veeam backups and Nimble Vmware Synch snapshots for the VMs on the same datastore ?

[aylottc56]

Todd,

Your Veeam backup window is probably in the evening, your snapshots have a start and finish time which you can easily fit around this.

Depends on the type of snapshots, if you are using VMWare sync'd snapshots then yes this it is likely the Nimble snapshots will timeout.

Chris

[stl_cardinals11125]

We use Veeam for VMWare backups and Nimble snapshots only on our NAS volume. (2 volumes total for us, 1 for vmware datastore, 1 for NAS volume)

[bbeulin69 · Accepted solution]

Good Afternoon Todd,

    This thread appears to be several months old, but I wanted to point out that I have several customers utilizing Nimble VSS snapshots with Veeam & love the capabilities.  However, the trick is to determine how to use them in conjunction with each other as you described above.  I've worked through this with my customers many times & here's essentially how we handle the integration:

1.  Use Nimble VSS Snapshots for Short Term data protection (i.e. 15 Minutes, 1 Hour, Daily, & even weekly)

     - Because Nimble VSS take a short amount of time to complete, you can flexibly schedule the Daily/Weekly at times when the Veeam VSS snapshots are not occurring.

2.  Utilize Veeam VSS Snapshots for Mid to Long Term Data Protection (i.e. Daily, Weekly, Monthly, etc.)

     -  Due to the nature of offloading these snapshots from storage solution, often over a smaller WAN pipe, to another storage solution, Veeam snapshots can often take hours to complete

     - To alleviate any conflict between Veeam & Nimble VSS Snapshots (Since they use the same VMware VSS service), you will want to exclude time windows on your Nimble Data Protection Schedules to make sure they don't conflict.

This is a simple enough procedure.  If your Nightly Veeam Snapshots take place beginning at 10pm & run until 2am, then setup your Nimble Hourly Snapshots to occur beginning at 3:00am and proceed until 9:00pm.  You can then setup a Daily Nimble Snapshot that occurs at 4:30am or even 12:30pm if you wanted.  The same exclusionary time should occur for the windows of your Veeam Weekly & Monthly Snapshot occurrences as well.

I hope you find this information useful.  Please let us know, & let your local SE know if you need further assistance.  You also have the opportunity to review & discuss your options with our world class Nimble Storage Support.

Thank you,

Bryan