ADSM-L

Re: [ADSM-L] VCB fullvm Proxy Server - opinions?

2009-10-23 08:56:17
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] VCB fullvm Proxy Server - opinions?
From: "Schaub, Steve" <steve_schaub AT BCBST DOT COM>
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:55:15 -0400
Wanda,

The way Storserver scheduling works is that you create a schedule, assign the 
nodes to it, and Storserver uses the "maximum concurrent backups" setting to 
keep as many plates spinning as you told it, until they are complete.  That 
way, if your proxy server is struggling, or has extra headroom, you can adjust 
the one parameter up or down.  You can also "mix and match" backups of vm's to 
different TSM servers in one Storserver schedule, each node can be defined to 
target a specific TSM server.  There are some things about the scheduler I'm 
hoping get added soon to make it more fine-grained, but overall it works well.

As far as the full backups are concerned, the copy from VM Host to Proxy server 
is SAN based, only the backup to TSM is over LAN (there is an option to use LAN 
instead, but I've not used it).  The full backup is where you will tax your 
proxy server - cpu, memory and nic (depending on if you do client side 
compression).

Good luck, feel free to contact me directly if you have questions or want to 
discuss.

Steve Schaub
Systems Engineer, Windows
BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee
steve_schaub "AT" bcbst.com
423-535-6574 (desk)

-----Original Message-----
From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf Of 
Wanda Prather
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 5:24 PM
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] VCB fullvm Proxy Server - opinions?

Steve,

Thanks for your reply.
I can believe the Storserver agent would be a big help; trying to set up a
schedule for 252 clients with the basic TSM function makes my head hurt!

Am I correct that the limiting factor in the fullvm backups is the Ethernet
interface between ESX and the Proxy server?

As far as I can tell, the vcbmounter fullvm command that is issued by TSM,
causes an entire copy of the .vmdx stuff to be made via Ethernet.  (Or has
Storserver figured out how to make that go via SAN?)

Thanks
Wanda

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 3:47 PM, Schaub, Steve <steve_schaub AT bcbst DOT 
com>wrote:

> Wanda,
>
> Running your proxy on a tsm server would allow you to use sharedmemory
> instead of network transfer, which theoretically should help.  The question
> is whether the 2 apps will play nice together, good luck getting either side
> to formally approve the setup, although it sounds like a good idea.
>
> As far as needing more than one proxy because of your weekly fulls, it
> depends on the size of your vm's and your backup window.
>
> We're currently running around 250 vm's through a single proxy (IBM HS21xm
> w/2 dual-core Xeon procs, 8gb mem, 4gb hba's, W2K3 x64).  Nightly
> incremental average around 4 hours.  Weekend fulls are made up of multiple
> schedules (we broke out the largest ones and scheduled later to avoid
> filling the vcb storage).  The main schedule holds 232 machines, ranging in
> size from 2.5gb-260gb (guess I need to go split that one out as well!) and
> runs approx 15 hours.  The other machines range from 150-200gb each and run
> about 5-6 hours each.  And yes, this proxy is breathing hard the whole time,
> which is why I'm getting ready to stand up 4 new proxies and distribute the
> load.
>
> Btw, we're using the Storserver Agent, and have the concurrent backup set
> to 10, which seems about right for the size proxy we have.
>
> Steve Schaub
> Systems Engineer, Windows
> BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On Behalf 
> Of
> Wanda Prather
> Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 11:07 PM
> To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> Subject: [ADSM-L] VCB fullvm Proxy Server - opinions?
>
> TSM server is 6.1.2 on Windows Win2K3.
> I have a customer who has tested running VCB fullvm backups of VMWare
> guests, using the TSM 6.1 client running on a Win2K3 Proxy server.  No
> problem getting the fullvm proxy backups to work.
>
> They are planning to virtualize the entire server farm, so in the next 2
> months they will grow to ~ 100 VM's.
> They think they want to do VCB fullvm's of the guests once a week, on
> Saturdays.
>
> Now here's my opinion question:
>
> We had no problem getting the proxy backups to work, but just based on the
> number of VM's and ESX servers, I'm thinking I'll need more than 1 proxy
> server, to provide lots of parallelism (so far, the bottleneck doing the
> fullvms, is the COPY of the vmdk files to the proxy server disk);.
>
> This TSM server has 2 quad-core processors; EMC Symmetrix disk, 16G Ram,
> four 3592 tape drives - quite beefy for a Winders box.
> We haven't come close to saturating physical resources, and esp. on
> weekends, it really has not much to do.
>
> I can't see why, since we have lots of unused hardware resources, I
> shouldn't set it up as another proxy server.   The fullvm copy to the proxy
> disk gets compressed by VCB, so there isn't that much data generated per
> hour to push to the TSM storage pools; the TSM server isn't going to be all
> that busy when the fullvms run.
>
> Anybody know a reason not to try it?  I'm asking because the doc says you
> MUST have a separate physical server for the proxy, but I can't see why it
> would be a restriction, just an issue of resources.....
>
> Thanks for any insight!
> W
>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Please see the following link for the BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee
> E-mail disclaimer:  http://www.bcbst.com/email_disclaimer.shtm
>

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