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Snapshot of esxi vmdks that are stored on the P4300 SAN

 
RobboRobson
Occasional Advisor

Snapshot of esxi vmdks that are stored on the P4300 SAN

Hi,

I hope someone can help me with this.

I have configured a volume on my Lefthand P4300 SAN that is being used by a ESXI server to store it's vmdk files for it's Virtual Machines.

These VM's are going to be on all the time.

What I want to do is have the P4300 snapshot that volume and replicate the vmdk files to a volume on a lefthand VSA in a DR site so that if the main site goes down, i can turn on those replicated VM's on another site and everything will work correctly.

Can i do this by simply creating a normal remote snapshot job on the P4300 or does this need to be done somehow on the esxi or vcenter servers?

Thanks for your help

James
4 REPLIES 4
Matthew D
Frequent Advisor

Re: Snapshot of esxi vmdks that are stored on the P4300 SAN

Hi James,

It sounds like you are trying to do what we currently do. It can be done completely in the Lefthand CMC.

You should have your VSA configured as a separate cluster in it's own management group. From the CMC you can create a remote snapshot schedule. The remote snapshot schedule dialog box will set everything up for you including creating a remote volume (to store your remote snapshots) and scheduling the remote snapshots. What happens is a primary snapshot is taken on your production cluster and then copied to a remote snapshot stored inside a remote volume on your DR cluster. When disaster strikes you can use the failover wizard to make the remote snapshot primary and then you would go to your DR ESX hosts, mount the volume(s), and boot up your VM's.

Definitely try this out in advance to make sure this works in your environment. This is how we do it in ours (twin P4300 G2 clusters). Someone else here may have a better solution for you, too. Good luck!
teledata
Respected Contributor

Re: Snapshot of esxi vmdks that are stored on the P4300 SAN

Yes, this works as you described.

However. Be aware that there is currently no API interfacing the snapshots with ESX so they are not "application aware" snapshots. So technically they could be considered a crash state (as if you just uncleanly powered off your ESXi host).

I personally have not had a problem with these "unclean" snapshots, but there is some small risk that they will not mount up cleanly.
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RobboRobson
Occasional Advisor

Re: Snapshot of esxi vmdks that are stored on the P4300 SAN

Hi,

Thanks for the replys.

I have set up a scheduled replication snapshot as per the instructions.

However when the snapshot happens, it gets to 99% utilisation and then starts the replicating.
The local snapshot never finishes and the remote snapshot gets stuck at 30%.

Did anyone else get this problem?
or does anyone know how to solve this?

Thanks

James
Matthew D
Frequent Advisor

Re: Snapshot of esxi vmdks that are stored on the P4300 SAN

James,

I should mention that we found snapshots to not work very well unless we converted all full provisioned volumes to thin provisioned volumes ("convert" probably isn't the correct word because it's really just a quick flip of one setting). The amount of provisioned storage would skyrocket during the time the oldest snapshot is deleted causing alarms and what-not.

Anyway...

I would call support about your snapshot issue. Ask them to remote in to your system to do a sanity check on your configuration. The Lefthand support guys are REALLY awesome. By far the best support I've ever dealt with.

Matt