Direct SAN Access help

Hello, 

 Are you trying to create a volume as a backup repository or mount a drive with existing data and back it up? 

 Regards,

Don 

I am trying to enable Veeam Backup & Replication to access the production storage for vSphere directly. In the past we would just create a DataStore in vSphere and then create a drive that maps to that DataStore. But I have read that direct SAN access processing mode allows Veeam Backup & Replication to communicate directly with the storage for the highest backup job performance. I was following this article: https://www.veeam.com/blog/using-the-iscsi-initiator-within-veeam-backup-replication-in-a-vm.html Thanks

I've done a little more testing and here's what I have found.

If I create a new Volume on the SAN and then create a new access policy and enter the iSCSI Initiator address of the windows server in the access policy that LUN is then visible as a Disk on the windows server.  This will work but I thought I could connect to the SAN group and anytime a new Volume is created Windows will see that.

Hi Mike, 

 OK, that's what I thought you might be doing.  You need to be very careful doing this.  As the article mentions if you or someone else formats this volume it will damage the VMFS Datastore.  Also make sure "automount" in Windows is disabled. 

 Windows on its own cannot "see" a VMFS Datastore data.  The filesystems are incompatible.  VEEAM leverages VMware VADP code to allow coordination between VMware and Windows to access the VMFS Data. 

https://searchvmware.techtarget.com/definition/VMware-VADP-VMware-vStorage-API-for-Data-Protection

 The "\\?\scsi#disk&ven_eqlogic&prod_100e......."     It just how Windows reports an unformatted disk. SCSI controller, Disk number and vendor info.  

 I would suggest you work with VEEAM support folks to make sure everything is configured correctly before attempting to run backups. 

 Regards,

Don 

Hello, 

 When a new volume is created on an iSCSI SAN there's no uPnP process that alerts a Windows server that a new volume is available.  No like plugging in a USB drive.   With iSCSI you have "Discover" new volumes after they are created using the MS iSCSI plugin. 

 You would NOT want it otherwise, or would be very easy to format over a volume from another server.  Controlling access to volume is very important. 

 That is why by default only one initiator can connect to a volume at one time.  If you want multiple hosts to do so you have to specifically enable multihost access on that volume.   As only cluster volumes or coordinated access via something like VADP will prevent corruption. 

 Regards,

Don