Hi @Mavo66 

It might be more of a case of what Alletra 4000 can support so worth checking best practice guide for that particular array.

If you are attached to VMware then 64TB but direct attached it can be bigger.  I would not want to back up anything too large unless using storage integration with Veeam as snapshot times will be large.

Thank you for your quick feedback! However, I have made a mistake: It is an HPE Alletra 6000, also known as ‘Nimble’. It should therefore be possible to back it up as ‘Storage Integration’, directly from a snapshot on the storage via iSCSI. This also works with smaller volumes (e.g. 1TB), but with a large volume (20TB) there is an error message that leads to the backup being cancelled. 

The Error Message is: 

“Secondary GPT header LBA 42950197247 exceeds the size of the disk (21990232555520) Failed to get LVID for device '\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE3'. Failed to open disk for read. Failed to upload disk 'vmfssan>' Agent failed to process method {DataTransfer.SyncDisk}.”

There is no definitive limit per se. That being said, depending on how you connect an ISCSI-backed Volume to a server (Linux vs Windows) and the filesystem you use, there are limitations there. But as Chris shared, you don’t wanna have a Volume too overly large having all Backups going to 1 Volume causing latency and congestion to the array; unless, of course, you have a small environment.

So you think it would be better to use a Linux proxy instead of a combined Windows Veeam server/proxy to perform the storage integration?

Hi @Mavo66 -

That’s what I have im my environment → Linux Repos (physical servers) and Linux Proxies (VMs). I used to have Windows combo boxes (physical Repos/Proxies) but like this setup better. Performance is a bit better (not drastic, but better). And, since I also use immutability, my jobs run faster due to the Backup Method (Fwd Incremental).

I created some posts on how to create Linux Repos/Proxies:

Hope that helps.

If you are able to install the Nimble iSCSI Manager on Linux then you can use that.  I have used Windows with Nimble previously and it worked out pretty well.  I would not combine the VBR server component on there and have it separate from the Proxy role.

Nimble does have a Nimble NCM installer for Linux, but isn’t really needed...not like it is for Windows.