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Re: HP lefthand with Veeam Backup

 
Aart Kenens
Advisor

HP lefthand with Veeam Backup

Hi all,

 

We've a Multisite HP P4500 setup which is used for our virtual environment from VMware.

Now we have a separate physical DL380+D2600 enclosure for backup purpose on a windows 2008 R2 system.

 

We've installed Veeam Backup on this server in combination with Dataprotector for tape.

I've setup an iSCSI initiator on this backup server and presented the LUN's from the Lefthand as read-only luns.

 

Now how can I use more then one networkadapter without locking the VMware luns like it did with the HP DSM MPIO?

Maybe the Microsoft MPIO is supported?

 

Anyone having such config as me?

 

Thanks.

5 REPLIES 5
Aart Kenens
Advisor

Re: HP lefthand with Veeam Backup

I think I've found the answer.

 

I cannot do MPIO in my config. Correct me if I am wrong.

oikjn
Honored Contributor

Re: HP lefthand with Veeam Backup

I'm not sure about Veeam, but if the connection to the LUN is made through the Windows server there should be no reason why you can't use the HP DSM.

 

One thing that sounds funky is that you shouldn't be connecting to the live LUNs for back up even if you are giving the server read-only access.  The reason is that the LUN can change before the backup is made so your backup can't be consistent.  What you should be doing is using the SAN/IQ to create a snapshot (maybe app-aware?)  and then running the backup off of that snapshot.

 

You might want to check on how Veeam works.  I use Microsoft's DPM server which actually doesn't directly attach to the LUNs at all.

Gediminas Vilutis
Frequent Advisor

Re: HP lefthand with Veeam Backup

 

It is described somewhere in HP best practices:

 

Information

HP recommends to not install the HP LeftHand DSM for MPIO on any host that has visibility to ESX LUNs.

Details

Using DSM MPIO on ESX VMs is not supported, but some users use a dedicated backup windows server in conjunction with VCB or Veeam backup for example to backup their VMs. Even if the windows server will use only the VMFS driver to communicate with the VMs, these VMs must be presented from the LeftHand to the windows initiator. So the Volumes will be shared from the ESX host and the windows at the same time.

When installing HP DSM MPIO on windows server, it will use its unique LUN locking ability, but ESX will use SCSI-2 Reserve/Release commands or the Atomic Test & Set (ATS) capability of VAAI to lock the volumes; this will lead to LUN accessibility issues. HP recommends to not install the HP LeftHand DSM for MPIO on any host that has visibility to ESX LUNs.

For more information see:

Running VMware vSphere 4 on HP LeftHand P4000 SAN Solutions .

ryan_1212
Advisor

Re: HP lefthand with Veeam Backup

I have been using veeam, with the san direct access mode. It works super well. I did not install the HP DSM, not only because it is not recommended but I would rather not have my backups running with DSM since all of my volumes are vmware which does not have dsm.  I would not want to allow the backups to run faster than my vmware hosts for performance reasons.

aussupoort
Occasional Advisor

Re: HP lefthand with Veeam Backup

HI,

 

Can i find the Veeam or HP documentation for this setup?

 

AS