Relative performance of LAN free versus LAN based AB&R 11 VE

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I am working on a design and have not yet decided on Acronis B&R 11 VE or how it would best be implemented.

We intend to get a SAN with VShpere 5 and 1 x ESXi(5) host. The SAN will have 1 x 1GB ISCSI connection available should we wish to implement LAN free backups.

Assume we have a 1GB LAN connection to the ESXi host & the Acronis Backup server/storage vault also had 1GB LAN.

Backups via the LAN would not be an issue as it will be done out of hours.

So given I have a choice from a design perspective, which is the more efficient from a speed point of view? LAN FREE or LAN based backups of virtual machines from the SAN?

I did read Documentation which implies that LAN Free backups are quicker "Acronis B&R 11 VE update 0 "Backing up Virtual Machines" section 9.1 page 29  

"If the backup speed is still insufficient, consider installing Agent for ESX(i) (Windows) (p. 11) on a separate physical machine. The agent can share the load with the virtual appliances or undertake backup of all the machines."

regards

Laurence

Lun, 02/20/2012 - 04:32
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Hi Laurence,

Laurence Buchanan wrote:
So given I have a choice from a design perspective, which is the more efficient from a speed point of view? LAN FREE or LAN based backups of virtual machines from the SAN?

As I know, from a speed point of view a Virtual Appliance is the fastest solution in environments with FC. Especially, if backups are stored on storages that are connected directly to Appliance (http://www.acronis.eu/support/documentation/ABR11/index.html#14356.html).

There are some drawbacks in such deployment:
1) The same storage cannot be used by many virtual appliances at the same time.
This is not a problem in your case cause you said it is just a single ESXi host. In most cases a single appliance is enough for the whole host.
2) You cannot use deduplication.
If deduplication is a must you should store all your backups on Storage Node.

Agent for ESX(i) (Windows) provides the ability to backup data directly from storage without passing this data through ESXi host. You can install it either on a dedicated physical machine or install it inside a virtual machine. In case of physical machine it allows avoiding additional load on ESXi host.

I haven't tested such configuration, but I think in case of iSCSI Agent for ESX(i) (Windows) can show better performance than Virtual Appliance because data is transferred directly from storage.

If you do such tests, please, share you knowledge.

Thanks!

Dom, 02/26/2012 - 15:40