Veeam Storage Plugin

I don't see any Powerstore plugins for Veeam available yet. A plugin for PowerMax was released by Veeam this week.

PowerStore Storage snapshot plugin for Veeam is in the works. Please work with your Dell Sales teams to get roadmap information about its avaiability.

Can you also point to the PowerStore X plugin for Veeam that was mentioned in the original post?

Anyone hear anything more about this. We just got some powerstores and need this.

No updates yet.

Hi Everyone,

Veeam plugin for PowerStore is out :

.            The download link can be shared with customers: https://www.veeam.com/download_add_packs/vmware-esx-backup/dellemc_powerstore/ [veeam.com]

1. Customer can install the plugin
2. Documentation: User guide: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/storage_install_plugin.html?ver=110
3. Adding the Universal Storage API Integrated Systems:  https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/usais_add.html?ver=110

haven't tried it yet, but this update is of 23 Nov 2021

Hello,

Do you have an update on when the plugin will be updated for PowerStore 3.x? Veeam are saying it is incompatible. 

Does anyone at Dell have an update on when we can expect an update to the Veeam storage plug-in for PowerStore OS 3.X? The OS has been out for six months. 

The current plug-in (compatible with 2.X) can open a storage snapshot in Veeam, but causes vCenter and all ESXI clusters to crash - which is probably the worst case scenario but I can reproduce this error each and every time I attempt restoration from a storage snapshot. 

This was a selling point for us to jump on the PowerStore train, so it's disappointing that an upgraded plug-in hasn't been released yet. 

We have this same issue on 2.x code of power store. We noticed the crash only happens on our esxi 7 hosts 6.7 hosts are fine. Trying to figure out if plugin issue or VMware issue as it has an issue on the storage rescan. 

I'm not sure whose code is responsible for the issue, but I resolved this for our ESXI hosts (fully patched 7.0u3 w/ vCenter) by removing each of the hosts from the PowerStore initiator host group and remapping the volumes. It now works without a hitch. 

Host groups is just an administrative thing, so I had no qualms about removing hosts from the group as it has no impact long-term and it's easy enough to re-add in the future.

What seems to happen during the recovery procedure is that Veeam sends a dismount command to all ESXI hosts, despite the fact the snapshot is only mounted on one. This causes each of the hosts to become unresponsive as they keep attempting to unmount the non-existent datastore.

Of course, I still can't do backups from storage snapshot as I'm running PowerStore OS 3.X so get loads of errors when scanning for storage, but I posted on the Veeam forum and they've received it for QA - so hopefully release soon. 

My Veeam forum post: Dell PowerStore Storage Plug-in (Issues and Future Release?) (veeam.com)

Hope this helps.

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@Chrispyyy wrote:

I'm not sure whose code is responsible for the issue, but I resolved this for our ESXI hosts (fully patched 7.0u3 w/ vCenter) by removing each of the hosts from the PowerStore initiator host group and remapping the volumes. It now works without a hitch. 

Host groups is just an administrative thing, so I had no qualms about removing hosts from the group as it has no impact long-term and it's easy enough to re-add in the future.

What seems to happen during the recovery procedure is that Veeam sends a dismount command to all ESXI hosts, despite the fact the snapshot is only mounted on one. This causes each of the hosts to become unresponsive as they keep attempting to unmount the non-existent datastore.

Of course, I still can't do backups from storage snapshot as I'm running PowerStore OS 3.X so get loads of errors when scanning for storage, but I posted on the Veeam forum and they've received it for QA - so hopefully release soon. 

My Veeam forum post: Dell PowerStore Storage Plug-in (Issues and Future Release?) (veeam.com)

 

Hope this helps.

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I can use storage snapshots with 3.x (I'm running 3.2.x now) code but if you remove a LUN and then re-add it, it wont work. If you keep the LUNS in there and upgrade the PowerStore code, Storage snapshot works fine. Not a big deal as this new plugin is now in testing but thought I'd put that out there.

Thanks for the info, I've only ever run PowerStore OS 3.X code - so like you said, sounds like if you retain the LUN info scanned when at OS 2.X code it will work okay. Just don't add any LUNs until the new version is released! 

Hi Dell,

Can you please let the Veeam guys have access to the lab and storage? They want to test the update to the plug-in and you've been leaving them on hold for nearly a month!

See thread: Dell PowerStore Storage Plug-in (Issues and Future Release?) (veeam.com)

I believe I ran into this issue earlier this week when testing the new plugin. I've got volume groups and host groups set up to presents hosts to my group of datastores...because wow, convenience.  Apparently me performing a test datastore snapshot in Veeam and deleting the snapshot (not even a minute in existence) was enough to start all my ESX hosts down the road to ruin.  About 12 hours later I started seeing high CPU alerts on the ESX hosts and CPU wait alerts on VMs. It wasn't until 24 hours later that I ended up on the phone with VMware and Dell looking at it. VMware storage rep said it was a case of APD/PDL and thought the issue could be related to the Veeam/Powerstore plugin as it was similar to a problem reported with Nimble. Looks like I deconstruct my Powerstore groups as you'd indicated in order to use the plugin or wait until Dell/Veeam provide a solution for the scenario.

I tested this a few days ago and I did not have this issue. Created a new test datastore, took a snapshot via Veeam, worked great, deleted it about 5 mins later, no issues.