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SANS and Servers have been ordered!

Hi All.

 

How many of you are using Linux Repositories in your own production environments? Is there any thing you would change or do differently right now?For those of you who have made the switch did you notice any performance differences?

 

I have many SAN’s arriving my way in the next few weeks. Many PB’s of storage.  For Veeam I’m going to be using NVMe flash at our production.  We want the ability to run a good amount of prod from backups for labs, testing, fast recovery in a critical event.  I also have tape jobs running air gapped copies at multiple sites. . .  For DR, it’s less common to run out there so it’s not going to be quite as fast on the storage side. 

 

As I’m using SAN’s, I need to attach servers. Currently with Windows servers things have been great, but the idea of immutable storage is nice.   This gives me an opportunity to potentially change 1 or both sites even to Linux .

 

Currently now I have an all in 1 setup at each site.  It actually works good, but running Proxy, Repo and tape servers from the same box is pretty taxing and not nearly as scalable. 

 

I was thinking of having a few multiuse boxes (Proxy/Repo) but that would need to split out the tape servers unless I separate drives to each server, and specify specific jobs, affinity rules etc.  Option 2 is add stand alone tape servers.   Right now with the AllInOne setup the repo IS the tape server. With fiber storage, It’s reading and writing from the same host and very fast.    

 

The separated servers will scale much better, but I’m torn between having a few “multi use” boxes, or splitting proxy, repo, tape etc.

 

If you could redesign your setup, would you keep all your servers separate, or combine a Tape server and Repo, or Proxy and Repo.   Having a few additional proxies or repos in the future might be something that gets changed in my plan as well.  

 

I’ll be logging some performance metrics and doing some benchmarks testing once I get things setup. Hopefully it may help a few people get the most out of their equipment. Those random read/writes are hitting my current Veeam SAN pretty hard as things have become fragmented. 

 

8 comments

coolsport00
Userlevel 7
Badge +19

Hey @Scott -

Yes, I use Linux as both Proxy and Hardened Repos. If you recall, I did a write-up on each:

Repositories:


Proxies:

I absolutely love my setup. Aside from immutability you’re looking to implement, don’t forget about Fast Clone! Makes the setup that much better. I was using FFwd & a Windows Proxy/Repo combo box previously, using BfSS and performance was pretty good. I think it’s better now (I wouldn’t say it’s significantly better...but for sure better) for a few reasons → 1. I’ve separated my Proxy/Repo roles. Though I had enough resources with the combo boxes previously, I think separating them made things better; 2. implementing fast clone. This goes without saying 😏 ; 3. backup method for VHR has to be Fwd method, which means no transform operations, which means quicker job completion.

You also mentioned above potentially having your Linux box be a combo Repo/Proxy? I recommend against that because you can only run them in the Network mode:

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/hardened_repository_vmware_backup_proxy.html?ver=120

As I don’t use Tape, I can’t comment on that. Keep us posted how your implementation goes bud. If you have any questions, let me know...I’ll try to help.

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
Scott
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Hey @Scott -

Yes, I use Linux as both Proxy and Hardened Repos. If you recall, I did a write-up on each:

Repositories:


Proxies:

I absolutely love my setup. Aside from immutability you’re looking to implement, don’t forget about Fast Clone! Makes the setup that much better. I was using FFwd & a Windows Proxy/Repo combo box previously, using BfSS and performance was pretty good. I think it’s better now (I wouldn’t say it’s significantly better...but for sure better) for a few reasons → 1. I’ve separated my Proxy/Repo roles. Though I had enough resources with the combo boxes previously, I think separating them made things better; 2. implementing fast clone. This goes without saying 😏 ; 3. backup method for VHR has to be Fwd method, which means no transform operations, which means quicker job completion.

You also mentioned above potentially having your Linux box be a combo Repo/Proxy? I recommend against that because you can only run them in the Network mode:

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/hardened_repository_vmware_backup_proxy.html?ver=120

As I don’t use Tape, I can’t comment on that. Keep us posted how your implementation goes bud. If you have any questions, let me know...I’ll try to help.

 

If I went combo it was going to be Windows. 

 

 If the Repo is also a Tape server, it has to be a Windows box. There isn’t a Veeam Linux Tape server yet. I could keep the tape as Windows with a Linux repo however. 

 I combined Proxy and Repo I was planning to keep it as windows.  Due to the fact I’ll have extra servers this way I was considering performance using 2-3 proxy/repo’s with proxy affinity on them. Even an external tape server with good networking could be an option still. 

 

I’m sure it’ll go well. I’ve set up many sans/proxies/repos.  I was mostly just wondering if anyone actually noticed any large real world performance differences or “gotchas”

 

Separating my tape server means I’ll be generating much more network traffic as well so I’ve gone 25Gb NW and 32Gb fiber. 

 

There is always so many ways to do the same thing but not test every single one. I hate leaving performance on the table and accepting “fast enough” lol  

 

 

 

coolsport00
Userlevel 7
Badge +19

“If the Repo is also a Tape server, it has to be a Windows box. There isn’t a Veeam Linux Tape server yet”

Umm...Mr Scott..Tape Servers are supported on Linux OS… 😉

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/system_requirements.html?ver=120#tape-server

If I wouldn’t have done my Linux session at VeeamON, I probably wouldn’t have known this, since I don’t use Tape 🙂 Anyway...you have options! But, you can’t use it as a Hardened Repo combo because Veeam needs root access for Tape Servers.

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
Scott
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

Oops!, Actually I recall hearing that but will have to see about drivers and management.  Personally my Linux skills are far behind my Windows skills as well so It’s less work, but this does seem like a good option. 

coolsport00
Userlevel 7
Badge +19

Understood. I don’t think it would be too bad..but of course, I’ve been playing on Linux the past year and a half 😊 But, you do have to start somewhere if you want to begin using Linux, right? 😉 haha

I guess what you could do is just do a test setup of a Tape Server on Linux; although, not sure if you have a spare Tape Device to do so?

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
Scott
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

I have IBM TS4500’s with multiple drives in virtual libraries.. Slick setup as I still have some TSM running on them with just a few drives I’m working to get rid of. I could just re assign one of the current Veeam drives to a test library for a bit to make sure drivers work etc. 

coolsport00
Userlevel 7
Badge +19

Nice! Curious how you fare with it.

Shane Williford - Veeam VMCA/VMCE | Veeam Legend | VUG Leader | VCP-DCV | Twitter: @coolsport00
Chris.Childerhose
Userlevel 7
Badge +21

We are moving all our repos to Linux for vCloud backups and VHR for VCC.  Getting away from MS licensing.

Chris Childerhose - VMCA2024 | VMCE2023 | Veeam Vanguard 7* | Veeam Legend 4* | vExpert 5* | VCAP-DCV/VCP-DCV | Object First Ace | Cisco Champion | Twitter: @cchilderhose | Blog Site – https://just-virtualization.tech

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