HPE Storage Users Group

Hello all,

This is my first post and I hope it is clear and makes sense...

We have 2 3PAR 7400 arrays, one in each of our 2 datacentres. We are using PeerPersistence to present volumes to VMware ESXi and would like to utilise our CommVault backup systems 'SAN mode' backup.

To do this we must present the same volumes that ESXi sees to a CommVault 'media agent' server - this is basically a Server 2012 R2 box with their software installed so it can understand VMFS and backup the volumes.

What we have found is that when we add this server to the host set the volumes show up in device manager with a warning state against them but never show in disk management. Our CommVault supplier has indicated this should work as they have 3PAR SAN Mode backup working at other sites, what they haven't got is somebody doing PeerPersistence like our setup.

I'm wondering if anyone else has ever tried this or has any suggestions?

I am still new to 3PAR so finding my feet with how it all works. I understand the above may be a bit disjointed so please ask any questions you may have.

Hello

We use Commvault SAN backup against VMware , you should not have to add the media agent to the VMware Host set.

Commvault will need a user on the 3par and it will create a snapshot of each VM and then each LUN.
And then export this volume to the Backup Host.


Adding the Windows 2012 Server to the Host set of the VMware LUNs can make Windows Automount all the VMFS volumes and thats not good. Could cause serious data loss.

Only thing that needs to be done is make sure that the 2012 Server is zoned to the 3PAR array and that Commvault has a user on the 3PAR so it can use the API in order to do all the magical stuff

Hi Christian, thanks for your reply.

This is exactly what I thought! Our supplier indicated otherwise so we followed their lead.

We do have CommVault connecting to vCenter and using 'hot add proxies' to snapshot a VM and then copy that into CommVault itself. We find these to be a pain as they don't always remove the disk from the proxy server meaning the protected VM ends up with lots of extra snapshot disks till we go in and remove the entry on the proxies vCenter settings.

We have CommVault setup as a host on the 3PAR so that's already done. My understanding is I now need to create a service account user for CommVault on the 3PAR and then do we configure the rest in CommVault?

Forgive my ignorance but both the 3PAR and CommVault are new to me in my new posting so it's a bit of a sink or swim situation