Thanks, Matt. The challenge right now isn't so much on the NetApp side but on the VMWare side.
Typical sequence of events: 1) get list of VMs on datastore X 2) quiesce all VMs on datastore X 3) snapshot datastore X via NetApp mechanism 4) un-quiesce all VMs on datastore X What happens is that step 2 takes about 30 seconds per VM. While the VMs are quiesced, they are effectively using VMWare's snapshot mechanism to store changed blocks until the NetApp snapshot is done. Step 3 takes a couple of seconds -- not an issue. Step 4, then, has to roll through each VM and remove the VMWare snapshot. The problem here is that the longer they are quiesced, the longer they take to come back. By the time we're near the last few VMs, they are taking a long time to roll forward and commit those VM snapshot changes. We have the option of not quiescing (man, that word gets harder to type every time) the VMs and just taking a netapp snapshot, which may or may not be fully restorable. I'm curious if anyone else is doing that. -Adam On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 9:20 AM, Matt Simmons <msimm...@lopsa.org> wrote: > When on a NetApp, I've seen most people use the NetApp VMware connector > for snapvaulting. I don't know how it operates at that scale, but I imagine > it could scale out. You have 75 datastores... I just don't know what would > be required to make it performant at that extreme. > > The NetApp dude at our company is on vacation right now, but when he gets > back, I can ask. > > --Matt > > > On Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 6:14 AM, Adam Levin <levi...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Hey all, I've got a question about how you backup your VM environment? >> >> We're using vSphere 5.5 and NetApp NAS for datastores. We have about 75 >> 8TB datastores, and about 2500 VMs. The VMs are not distributed evenly >> because of service levels associated with the datastores. >> >> We're being told by various backup vendors that the main issue is the >> number of VMs per datastore, because quiescing lots of VMs and then taking >> a datastore snapshot can produce long wait times when rolling the qieusced >> images back in to the running VM. >> >> Our VM team is telling us that there is no current tool to manage the >> number of VMs per datastore, just the size of the datastores. >> >> So I'm curious what some common methods are for managing backups in a >> large VM environment. Do you just use agents and backup from within the >> VM? Do you bother doing app consistent backups of the VMs or just snapshot >> the datastore and not worry about consistency? Have you found a product >> that manages qiuescing and snapshots in a reasonable way? >> >> We've looked at NetBackup, Commvault and Veeam so far. >> >> Thanks, >> -Adam >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Tech mailing list >> Tech@lists.lopsa.org >> https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech >> This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators >> http://lopsa.org/ >> >> >
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