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dannyfiasco
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iSCSI with Veeam

Post by dannyfiasco »

We have 2 ESX 4 Servers with access to a iSCSI Dell MD3000.
Our Veeam 4.1.1 is running on a VM and should backup to a iSCSI Synologie device.
The Veeam Server has no access to the MD3000 but has mountet the iSCSI Synologie-device as a iSCSI-Target. The MD3000 iSCSI device resides in a seperate network to which the Veeam-Server has no access.
When enabling SAN (with failover) Backup over StorageAPI i always get following error message and Backup is very slow:

Unable to establish direct connection to the shared storage (SAN).
Please ensure that:
- HBA is properly installed in the Veeam Backup server computer, or software iSCSI initiator is configured correctly.
- SAN volume can be seen by operating system in the Windows Disk Management snap-in on the Veeam Backup server.
- Read access is allowed for the Veeam Backup server computer on the corresponding LUN (refer to your SAN documentation).

Direct SAN connection is not available, failing over to network mode...


My question: can anyone explain me how this backup exactly should access the files to backup.
And do i have to present the MD3000 iSCSI Target to the VM Veeam-Server so that Veeam can directly access the iSCSI device.
Or do i have to present the MD3000 iSCSI Target to the VirtualCenter server.
Or does any of this servers need to access the network where the MD3000 iSCSI device resides.

Thank you very much
Gostev
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Re: iSCSI with Veeam

Post by Gostev »

Hello, yes you have to present the MD3000 iSCSI Target to the VM Veeam-Server so that Veeam can directly access the iSCSI device - otherwise you will not be able to backup from it directly.
dannyfiasco
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Re: iSCSI with Veeam

Post by dannyfiasco »

Thank you for this information. My Information until now was that Veeam will access the iSCSI Device through the ESX-server or storage API. Is there anywhere a exact description how to present the iSCSI Target to the Veeam Server. Because i think that the Veeam-server should no have write-access to the device.
Right?
Gostev
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Re: iSCSI with Veeam

Post by Gostev »

Correct, Veeam has different options of accessing VM disks with vStorage API. You can review stickied FAQ thread for more information on all available modes, see this post. Also the Evaluators Guide has great deal of information about this.

In short, there are the following options:
1. The option you are using right now is direct storage access, this requires direct connection to the storage. You can refer to Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator documentation for more information about how to configure it to present iSCSI LUN to a Windows server. Veeam server needs read access to the storage device in this mode, write access is not needed.
2. The other option is direct storage access from ESX I/O stack (this mode is called Virtual Appliance). You can use this mode because you run Veeam Backup server in a VM. This mode does not require any additional configuration such as presenting iSCSI LUN to Veeam server. It "just works".
3. The other option is storage access over LAN and through ESX network stack. This is the mode you are using right now, as direct storage access mode would automaticall failover to it. This mode works in any scenario and also does not require any additional configuration like presenting iSCSI LUN to Veeam server.

Thanks!
dannyfiasco
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Re: iSCSI with Veeam

Post by dannyfiasco »

Thanks for the reply. I can now see the disks in Disk Management, but only 1 disk is online. All the other Luns appear as "Not Initialized" Do i have to initialize the disks or is this exactly what i should not do?
TrevorBell
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Re: iSCSI with Veeam

Post by TrevorBell »

yes you have to do that so the os will see them but do not convert them to dynamic
dannyfiasco
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Re: iSCSI with Veeam

Post by dannyfiasco »

The operation did not complete. Check teh System Event Log for more information on the error. This ist what i get, when trying to initialize the disks. In the Event Log there is no entry.
Gostev
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Re: iSCSI with Veeam

Post by Gostev »

Trevor is probably talking about NTFS LUN assuming you are trying to backup to iSCSI. But for your VMFS LUNs, you definitely do to anything with (e.g. initialize), moreover as per FAQ you need to disable automount on your Veeam Backup server before adding these LUNs.
Fredde
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Re: iSCSI with Veeam

Post by Fredde »

Hi,

I have a similair problem, i have successfully configured Microsofts iSCSI initiator on the VEEAM backup server.

I have approx 10 virtual servers that i back up via VEEAM, most without any errors but some servers give me the error that direct connection isn't possible.

We use a Dell MD3000i SAN and have 6 datastores, all of these show up in Disk manager on the VEEAM backup server but 3 discs show up as "Not initialized, unallocated" whilst the other 3 discs show up as "Online, Healthy (Unknown Partition).

I haven't initialized or converted any of the iSCSI disks.

The common thing in my problem is that the virtual servers that I can't back up directly from the SAN is that these virtual servers reside on the disks that show up as "Not Initialized, Unallocated"

Hope someone out there has any ideas to my problem.

Thanks
Fredde
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Re: iSCSI with Veeam

Post by withanh »

I'm not familiar with the Dell iSCSI device, we use an IBM iSCSI device. I had a similar problem because our iSCSI device had muliple network connections. In order for these to present properly to Windows (i.e. show as online/healthy instead of not initialized/unallocated) I had to install and configure the MPIO service along with the iSCSI software initiator. Then I set the MPIO to use auto-failover so it would still only use one connection at a time.

I still have issues some times when the VMware server decides to swap things to the other controller because Windows doesn't swap over automatically. It seems like its supposed to, but maybe because Windows isn't really accessing the drives it doesn't know to switch??? Anyway if it happens, I then just go in and manually switch the controllers from active to standby and the drives again show properly.

Just for comparison, I have 4 vSphere ESXi hosts, 12 LUNs spread across 3 SAN devices, and 20 VMs.

h
For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert - Arthur C Clarke's Fourth Law
Fredde
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Re: iSCSI with Veeam

Post by Fredde »

Hi,

Thanks for the help Withanh!

I downloaded the Resource CD for the dell MD3000i SAN and installed the StorPort drivers that where missing and the Dell storage agents on the VEEAM backup server. After that i reconfigured Microsoft iSCSI initiator and all disks now appear OK as they should.

We'll wait until tonight to see if the VEEAM backups run without any complaints.

Regards
Fredde
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Re: iSCSI with Veeam

Post by broadview »

I had the same issues, installing the MDSM utility and StorPort drivers (Prerequisites) allowed me to connect from my physical Windows Server 2003 Machine to my MD3000i and Backup my VMs via SAN method.
deneshkanna
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Re: iSCSI with Veeam

Post by deneshkanna »

Hi Guys,

I would like to thanks you all a million for making life easy for me.

Atlast i got my MD3000i working with Veeam 5 in SAN Mode. Yuppeee

:D :D :D :D :D :D
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