Technical White Paper Dell EMC SC Series: Veeam Backup & Replication Integration Abstract This document provides guidance for integrating and configuring Veeam® Backup & Replication™ data protection solutions with Dell EMC™ SC Series storage.
Revisions Revisions Date Description August 2019 Initial release Acknowledgements Author: Jason Boche The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license.
Table of contents Table of contents Revisions.............................................................................................................................................................................2 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................................................2 Table of contents .................................................................................................
Executive summary Executive summary Data protection and recovery are fundamental services that every data center provides. However, achieving effective and timely virtual machine recovery is challenged by workload consolidation through virtualization, increasing rates of data growth, and application and data mobility. Dell EMC and Veeam have partnered to create a solution that addresses these challenges.
Introduction 1 Introduction Virtualization has been and continues to be a transformative technology in the modern data center. Conventional methods of server consolidation used in the past are no longer practical in a virtualize-first era. The benefits of efficiency, mobility, uptime, and cost savings are quickly realized. In the wake of these efforts, new opportunities for data protection and recovery have emerged.
Requirements 2 Requirements This section describes the requirements to integrate Veeam Backup & Replication software with SC Series storage. Backup & Replication requirements: • • • • • • • • • • Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 4b or newer is required. Backup servers may be physical or virtual. The SC Series plug-in is installed only on the backup server. The SC Series plug-in is not installed on separate proxy servers. iSCSI proxy servers may be virtual or physical.
SC Series infrastructure setup and configuration 3 SC Series infrastructure setup and configuration To begin setup, download the Dell EMC SC Series plug-in for Veeam Backup & Replication from the Veeam website. Install the plug-in on the Veeam backup server. With the plug-in installed, before SC Series storage can be integrated, setup must first take place in Veeam Backup & Replication. Additional configuration is optional and depends on the needs of the environment.
SC Series infrastructure setup and configuration 2. Click Show more vendors. 3. Click Dell EMC SC Series to select the installed SC Series plug-in.
SC Series infrastructure setup and configuration 4. Enter the SC Series management DNS FQDN or IP address. Note: SC Series storage is added to the Veeam storage infrastructure by each individual storage array. Dell™ Storage Manager (DSM) federated storage management is not involved in Veeam integration. 5. In the Credentials drop-down menu, choose or create an administrator-level account that has been created on SC Series storage.
SC Series infrastructure setup and configuration 6. Choose the protocol which will be used between the backup proxy server and SC Series storage. In the following example, iSCSI is used. A backup proxy can be automatically selected or specifically named here. Note: In smaller environments, the backup server and the proxy server often are the same server sharing both roles. In larger environments, there may be separate proxy servers.
SC Series infrastructure setup and configuration Note: During a Veeam rescan process, a Veeam IQN is used. During Backup from Storage Snapshot process, a Microsoft IQN is used. During a restore process, Veeam will try an ESXi IQN one by one and if necessary create a server object. 3.2 Configuring SC Series storage infrastructure After adding SC Series to the storage infrastructure, the environment may be tuned. 3.2.
SC Series infrastructure setup and configuration 1. To filter out the unnecessary volumes, right-click the SC Series storage and click Choose volumes. Veeam documentation refers to this process as limiting the rescan scope. 2. Choose the volumes to use exclusively with Veeam Backup & Replication or filter them out.
SC Series infrastructure setup and configuration 3. After the next storage discovery, the volume list should reflect the volume filtering preferences. The SC Series arrays and corresponding volumes will be the only volumes available to Veeam storage snapshot integrated data protection and recovery jobs. Storage discoveries and rescans will complete quicker with a lower number of volumes and snapshots to work with. Note: Up to this point, a Veeam data protection job has not yet been created or run.
SC Series infrastructure setup and configuration 3.2.3 Configuring proxy server transport mode in Veeam The Veeam Backup & Replication proxy server transport mode defines how the proxy server retrieves virtual machine data for backup repository jobs. Several modes are available: • • • • Automatic selection: Data retrieval mode selection is automatic. Direct storage access through the Dell EMC SC Series plug-in will be used whenever possible if installed, configured, and available.
SC Series infrastructure setup and configuration 2. Under Transport mode, click Choose. 3. Select Direct storage access.
SC Series infrastructure setup and configuration 4. Click Finish. Note: The transport mode applies to backup jobs only. For instance, a snapshot takes place and VM data is streamed by the proxy server to a backup repository that is accessible to the backup server. The transport mode does not apply to Dell EMC SC Series snapshot jobs.
Backup job creation 4 Backup job creation Backing up and restoring VM data is where operations staff spend the bulk of their time within Veeam Backup & Replication. These areas are also where the Dell EMC SC Series plug-in integration comes into play. Within the Veeam Backup & Replication user interface, there are many ways in which to create a backup job. The operational process and options for creating backup jobs are well documented by Veeam and are not included in this document.
Backup job creation When storage snapshots are used, the vSphere snapshot is only open for a brief time. In addition, the proxy server accesses the VM data from SC Series storage directly over the Fibre Channel or iSCSI fabric. The same process is represented in the following points and uses relative times as an example: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Backup job creation Once again, when storage snapshots are used, the vSphere snapshot is only open for a brief time. However, because VM data is not streamed to a traditional Veeam backup repository, this type of backup timeline is much shorter.
Instant VM recovery 5 Instant VM recovery Similar to creating backup jobs, the SC Series plug-in integration plays a role in data recovery when recovering from storage snapshots. The key differences between the two methods are the storage protocol and performance of the recovered VM when it is powered on. 5.1 Veeam backup repository Virtual machine data stored in a Veeam backup chain is recovered with the vPower NFS datastore that is mounted to the recovery vSphere host.
Instant VM recovery 1. Under Storage Snapshots, drill down to the volume and virtual machine to be recovered. Choose Instant VM recovery. 2. Select the storage snapshot to recover from. Note the blend of available snapshot sources. - A snapshot from a Veeam Backup & Replication backup job is outlined in green. Snapshots from a volume snapshot profile are outlined in blue. Snapshots from a vSphere web client plug-in are outlined in red. 3.
Instant VM recovery In either case below, a view volume is used for the recovery. In this example, the restore is redirected to an alternate View volume. 4. Provide the restored VM name, inventory location, and resource pool before completing the Instant VM Recovery workflow steps.
Instant VM recovery The recovery View volume can be seen in DSM as mapped to the recovery vSphere host.
Instant VM recovery The Statistics tab reveals that the recovery view volume has access to all available tiers and RAID types in the SC Series page pool. The access is defined in the storage profile attached to the volume. This is where view volumes achieve performance and scale beyond vPower NFS. However, restoring from a very old snapshot likely means that frozen storage pages have data progressed down to tier 3 spinning media.
Instant VM recovery The recovered virtual machine can be seen in the vSphere client. Note its associated datastore snap-xxx. This is the transient SC Series view volume discussed above. After the VM data has been recovered, use the Stop Publishing feature to clean up. If the recovery VM is still registered on the view volume, it will be powered off and unregistered. The view volume will then be unmounted and deleted.
Miscellaneous operations 6 Miscellaneous operations Outside of daily backup and restore operations, there are a few storage-snapshot-related processes that are discussed in this section. It is unlikely these will be used frequently but discussing them helps correlate the task’s interaction with SC Series storage. 6.
Miscellaneous operations As mentioned above, the rescan process evaluates every snapshot on a volume. The amount of time it takes to rescan a volume is fairly linear with the number of snapshots on a volume. In the example below, note the time required to scan the volume on the left with 9 snapshots and the volume on the right with 73 snapshots. There are a variety of reasons to manage and limit the number of snapshots a volume has, and Veeam Backup & Replication is an addition reason.
Miscellaneous operations 6.2 Creating manual snapshots An SC Series storage snapshot with unlimited expiration can be created manually from the Storage Infrastructure menu within Veeam. 1. Right-click a volume and choose Create snapshot. 2. Provide the Snapshot name. This name will be visible in the snapshot description field of the volume attributes and would be seen in DSM, for example. The Snapshot description field within Veeam is not used with SC Series storage.
Miscellaneous operations 6.4 Orphaned snapshots As mentioned throughout this document, Veeam Backup & Replication creates SC Series snapshots with no expiration. There are opportunities for snapshots to be created with no follow-up mechanism to expire them. These are referred to as orphaned snapshots. There are a few examples of how snapshots can become orphaned: • • A Veeam backup job is deleted, leaving behind all associated snapshots still within the job’s retention policy.
Conclusion 7 Conclusion Veeam Backup & Replication is a powerful data protection and recovery tool for VMware virtual data centers. The Dell EMC SC Series storage integration plug-in adds value to the solution by providing array-based snapshot support at scale.
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