I’ve done a fair amount of installs of this combination, Veeam and EMC’s DataDomain deduplication device. The solution is a wonderful combination - but the number 1 complaint is that it is slow……..slower than it should be.
Why is it slow? Well, the short answer is because of the CIFs implementation on the Data Domain. From testing, transferring data via CIFS is about 45% slower than transferring files using NFS.
Since windows and Veeam don’t natively support NFS, the solution is to deploy a linux proxy server to act as the go between. In essence, we go from Veeam –> DataDomain, to Veeam –> Linux proxy –> DataDomain.
Step 1: Deploy a linux VM
- This can be any flavor - I choose Ubuntu Server since I am most familiar with Ubuntu.
Step 2: Mount the DataDomain NFS Share on the Linux VM.
- With Ubuntu, I had to install the NFS-common package
sudo apt-get install portmap nfs-commmon
- Next, let’s make a folder that the NFS share will mount to
mkdir /mnt/datadomain
chattr +i /mnt/datadomain
- Next, we need to setup some parameters, and mount the NFS share by typing the following:
echo 262144 > /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_max echo 262144 > /proc/sys/net/core/wmem_max echo 262144 > /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_default echo 262144 > /proc/sys/net/core/wmem_default echo ‘8192 524288 2097152’ > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_rmem echo ‘8192 524288 2097152’ > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_wmem echo 2097152 > /proc/sys/net/core/wmem_max echo 1048576 > /proc/sys/net/core/wmem_default /sbin/service nfs start “mount -t nfs -o nolock,hard,intr,nfsvers=3,tcp,bg (datadomain IP):/data/share /mnt/datadomain”
- Your Linux server should now have the NFS share mounted in the /mnt/datadomain directory.
Step 3: Add the linux server to Veeam
- Under Backup Infrastructure, Choose to add a new Linux host, and enter in the IP and credentials for the linux server.
- Now, under the Backup Repostories, add a new repository.
- Choose the type Linux Server
- Choose your Linux VM from the drop down, and then click populate
- Choose your NFS share (or click next, and browse to it)
- After clicking next, choose advanced and un-check the boxes.
- Finish out of the wizard.
Step 4: Setup your backup jobs to this new repository
- You are now ready to setup backup jobs and point them to this repository.
- Remember to edit the job settings and disable in-line deduplication, and un-check compression.
Results:
- Veeam connected directly to CIFS share - 53MB/s
- Veeam connected using Linux proxy and NFS - 107MB/s
