What do you mean @Shaokat ?? What are you wanting to backup? Are you wanting to use VBR or Veeam Agent? VM(s)? Physical servers? What do you mean ‘lan free’? Home network? Just need quite a bit more info of what you’re trying/wanting to do so we can assist you to meet your goals.

Hi @coolsport00 ,

I want to backup my vmware vm backup direct to my san storage which is connected by FC.

From a high-level, you would create a physical server to be used as a Proxy. And, depending on the amount of VMs and storage size of your VM backups, you could combine the physical server to be both a Veeam Proxy & Repository, which is what I do in my environment. I have 2 “combo” physical servers (boxes). I use iSCSI. I have the array I use for backups configured to ‘see’ my iSCSI IQNs of my Repository (combo) servers. I also configured my VM production storage array Volumes to ‘see’ my Repository server IQNs as well. This way, I can use the DirectSAN transport mode to back up my VMs ‘directly’ to my backup array. I used to use this transport mode, but I now implement Backup from Storage Snapshots where Veeam takes a storage snapshot of my VM Volumes, then performs backup processes off this storage snapshot. You could do the same thing in your environment, assuming you have a supported storage array, and just use FC.

Going into detail on how to see this up would be quite a long response. I highly recommend taking a look at Veeam’s VMware User Guide to read about the details to set up your environment. Veeam also provides a ‘best practice guide’ here you can reference.

Hope that gets you started.

BTW, you could also set up VM proxies to be used within your VMware environment, but you’d get a bit more performance using physical servers with more CPU/RAM resources, if you have some.

Good points by @coolsport00, technically the only “LAN Free” backup you could do (no traffic going to hypervisor or between Veeam components) would be Veeam Agent to a disk accessible via the Veeam Agent

> This way, I can use the DirectSAN transport mode to back up my VMs ‘directly’ to my backup array.

Basically, when you need to get the Direct SAN or Virtual SAN mode and the backup proxy setup. Then others basic steps can follow. 

I use FC with direct SAN and backup from storage snapshots.  What specifically do you need help with?

To get started, make sure you have physical proxies with FC connected and zoned to the production SAN. Depending on your repository, if it is another SAN, zone it to that as well. 

You can manually select the Transport Mode on the proxy server, or let it automatically select. Auto is good if the DirectSAN method fails, it can still use the network. 

Read the documentation as you will need to provide credentials so that Veeam can tell the storage to take sanpshots. Also make sure your SAN is on the supported hardware list. 

Hi
Ive seen setup with a Physical Veeam server, connected directly to the SAN for talking with the storage cabinets, and then another Nic for management, being able to talk to the vcenter, but no other networks or environments, and did the job pretty good.

as @Scott mentioned, adding the storage and their credentials for storage snapshots, and in my usecase, the vcenter credentials due to those backups were taken from vsphere.

IF you have the opportunity to talk to a Veeam B&R Architect, it would be a dream, also having a look into your infra with a diagram and the available hardware / resources.

cheers.

The only true “LAN Free” method I can think of would be to have a VM performing backups, proxy on each host, all hosted connected to an array that is interconnected with SAS/DAS to each host.  But note that this does not comply with the 3-2-1 rule as that’s only 2 copies of your data (production, backup on the array).  Getting that third copy is going to require a network unless you leverage something like rotating external drives which also give you an offline copy.  As Scott noted, he’s using Fiber Channel, and FC may or may not qualify as LAN free depending on your definition….but for me that’s typically a separate storage network unless you’re using something like a Cisco UCS or another vendor that converges storage traffic on to the same physical Top of Rack switches and NIC’s as the VM traffic, although those two networks are technically virtualized even if they fall on the same links.

You can use Storage snapshot integration

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