DXi9000 Series Veeam Installation

Overview

This document provides instructions for installing and configuring a Veeamâ„¢ Linux Repository on DXi9000 Series systems.

Veeam

The Veeam feature on the DXi allows the system to perform backup and replication with Veeam software on VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual environments.

The Veeam Agent runs in the DXi process space with direct access to DXi resources, providing better performance than Veeam running against a DXi NAS share as a shared folder.

The simplified block diagram below shows the data flow in a typical Veeam installation. Management communication is omitted for simplicity. The VMs on the Customer Network are identified by the Veeam Backup Server. The backups can be full or incremental using the Veeam Agent changed block tracking. At the scheduled backup, the Veeam Agent works with the Veeam Backup Server to facilitate the data movement from the backup sources to the DXi. The backup data is sent by the Veeam Agent to the NFS Share for deduplication and storage in the Blockpool.

Preparing for the Installation

Note: Please review the Veeam Backup and Replication Best Practices Guide, downloadable from the Best Practices page for your DXi product.

Before you begin the Veeam installation, make the following preparations:

DXi Configuration

Veeam Configuration

Once Veeam has been configured enabled on the DXi system, the Linux server within the Veeam Backup and Replication software must be configured. Do the following on the Veeam Backup and Replication server:

Additional Information

Prior to Veeam Backup and Recovery 9.5 Update 4, repositories for DXi were either created as shared folders (without VDMS support) or Linux Repositories (with VDMS support). With the release of Veeam 9.5 Update 4, you may now create deduplicating target repositories specifically for DXi if you have purchased the DXi VDMS license. The legacy repositories are completely operational and the data integrity and deduplication are unaffected, but we encourage you to create new repositories as DXi deduplication repositories in Veeam v9.5 Update 4.

If you created a Veeam Linux Repository for DXi in earlier versions of Veeam, then after upgrading to Veeam v9.5 U4 further changes to the Linux repository configuration are not allowed by Veeam. You may create a new deduplicating DXi repository and make configuration changes as needed. Your data in the legacy Linux repository will still be used by DXi deduplication to reduce the size of data you store on disk, so there will be no loss of data reduction by adding the new repository.

Veeam 10 supports DXi Fast Clone. Fast Clone references backup file blocks already present on the volume. This means manipulations associated with synthetic full backups employ metadata updates and require reduced I/O operations on backed up data. This eliminates the re-hydration retrieve operations previously employed with synthetic full backups.

Installing AccentFS for Veeam 10

The Accent File System (AccentFS) includes your servers in the deduplication process, to minimize bandwidth and send only unique data over the network. Since the Accent File System appears as a native file system on the client, or backup host, any program that can write to a file system can use AccentFS.

Note: Installing AccentFS for Veeam is an option. It is not a required part of Veeam installation.

Installing AccentFS for Veeam 9.5

The Accent File System (AccentFS) includes your servers in the deduplication process, to minimize bandwidth and send only unique data over the network. Since the Accent File System appears as a native file system on the client, or backup host, any program that can write to a file system can use AccentFS.

Create and Designate a Local Target Repository for AccentFS

In the following section you will designate a local repository on the same Linux proxy server that has an AccentFS mount to the DXi, therefore all data going from that particular Linux proxy, over the AccentFS link to the DXi will be deduplicated at the source and not the destination.

Manage Veeam

Use the following commands to manage Veeam agent integration.

Note: The CLI Admin (cliadmin) account must be enabled on the DXi. If you do not have the password for this account, contact the DXi administrator.