ESXI - vSwitch for backup traffic?

[marcoi]

I have my home nodes updated to version 6.5 for ESXI. I working on a backup solution using XSIBACKUP pro and a vm built on ubuntu server and borgbackup. My first idea is having a Borg VM running on each node for that node's backup of VM images. XSI uses SCP to copy a snapshot of the vm over to the borg vm repository. My idea is since its network base transfer and local was to use a vSwitch on esxi host with no network adapters, then add the vmkernal to the switch and the borg vm to create a back end network with different range of IP addresses. I was able to do that and got it working where the esxi host running xsibackup can send via scp my snapshot for backing up. One node i was able to see 70-80mb per sec, the other was around 40-50. Weird thing is the first one had way less power(cpu) and going to single spindle datastore disk while the other was going to raid-0 4 x 250gb sdd datastore disk. Anyways right now im messing with it all and testing out different things. but before i get too far, is the vswitch limited in speeds? Can it hit say 10GB speeds? I set the mtu to 9k on the switch and in the vm and esxi vmkernal. the vm is using vm3 nic if that matters.

Any thoughts or suggestion while I'm testing this out will be much appreciated.

My current test is using scp from esxi to the borg vm to get a sense of spend without xsi and using the borg repository. I just want a pure network speed test.

on a side note it doesnt look like borg process of deduping cares about hdd speeds. it may be cpu/mem intensive. but thats for other tests.

 

[Tom5051]

Not worth the effort.
It's easier and quicker to rebuild and reconfigure a fresh ESXi host than to restore one from a backup.
Takes less than 30 minutes.
Most places I have worked for keep spare USB keys with a fresh install on them.

 

[marcoi]

mtu 9k or 1500 didnt make a difference in speed with scp between esxi hsot and borg vm. I also disabled tcp offload on the borg vm.
Best i seem to get is 95Mb/s. there should be a way to get into the 10GB range with this right?

 

[marcoi]

Not worth the effort.
It's easier and quicker to rebuild and reconfigure a fresh ESXi host than to restore one from a backup.
Takes less than 30 minutes.
Most places I have worked for keep spare USB keys with a fresh install on them.

my purpose isnt to backup the esxi host, its to backup the vms on it to a borg enabled vm.

 

[Tom5051]

my purpose isnt to backup the esxi host, its to backup the vms on it to a borg enabled vm.

Sorry I misunderstood.

 

[marcoi]

Sorry I misunderstood.

no worries

 

[marcoi]

looks like per my testing, 100mb is limit from esxi host. I can run two scp one from esxi and the other from 2nd vm and the target vm will show 200+ mb/s incoming or 100 mb for each scp. oh well

 

[grogthegreat]

Using SCP will always be slow. Borg is great because it does its dedupe and compression before sending over the network which makes it very fast. As you've found, Borg doesn't yet run directly on ESXi. I have a ticket open on the issue but a programmer will need to take the issue on for there to be any progress.
As a side note, you might want to backup each hosts's VMs to a different host. Having your backups in the same box as the data isn't the safest.

 

[marcoi]

I originally planned to have cross host backups with xsi/borg combo but until i figure out how to make the data move faster I decided for the moment to use local esxi disk to backup the vms. I like to keep a backup of the vms in case i screw up something will playing.

All real data is backup and stored on ws2012r2 vm with lsi card in pass through IT mode with 2 X WD RED 6TB drives. One for storage, the 2nd drive for backup of server and content then i use an external usb 5 tb drive for quarterly copies and finally i backup online. so my data should be safe.

 

[whitey]

FreeNAS ZFS replication and I'm set. All NFS/iSCSI datastores replicated to two different FreeNAS nodes, set it and forget it (other than snapshot cleanup from time to time,once a month I usually target) :-D

Interesting idea though, I recently stood up a CPEH cluster and am shooting Veeam B&R traffic into it but that is just a play thing/use-case to use the CEPH cluster. Seeing about 50MB/sec on backup, 105MB/sec restore w/ that product/use-case at least.

 

[marcoi]

my next test is playing with freenas more. I had one setup in the past and I did something that caused the data to get lost...oops
So since then i haven't trusted it enough to put my real data on it. but that was years ago so im sure the product is better.
The other thing with freenas would be i would have to nfs mount for the datastores which would require networking upgrades since i cant seem to get more then 100 mb/sec over the vswitch. more playing is needed in any case.

 

[CosmoJoe]

Something else to consider if you are open to using another VM backup solution:
Here’s how you can get a free Veeam NFR license key
Veeam is so simple to set up. It has saved my bacon a few times.

 

[marcoi]

I got a veeam license in the past, but it didnt work with free version of esxi since the api are closed off. XSIBackup worked with both free and licensed versions of esxi so i never went back to try veeam after i got my vmug licenses.