Hi Nils,
you wrote:
For every customer a different scenario offcourse, but you can install
MS iSCSI Initiator in
a VM, stack SnapDrive on top of that, and in this way run SnapManager
for Exchange.
Basically, you connect a dedicated LUN from within the VM directly to
a NetApp, and not
use any VMWare functionality (except for OS disks) to run Exchange.
This way you have your snapshotted LUNs and you can back them up any
way you like.
I'm afraid I wasn't fully clear. We just replaced a FAS940c by a 3070c which is attached to the (already existing) FC fabric. The FAS940c wasn't. That's why we used iSCSI for our other customers in the past. But now we would like to get the storage from the FC fabric. The problem, as I see it, is that afaik there is no way to attach the fabric to the guest OS directly, as you'd need a FC HBA inside the VM.
From the point of view of the guest OS, the storage that is attached to the ESX looks just like an ordinary hard drive. And I suppose SnapDrive won't work if there is no LUNs for it to see. However, to keep the Exchange storage groups consistent when doing back up, you need to start the backup from within the guest OS. We might use the NT backup mechanism, though - but I'm not yet sure if that's our best bet.
There are many variation to this theme, and I heard rumours that
NetApp is working on
expanding possibilities of SnapManager for VI and SnapDrive, but I'm
sure your SE will
have more information on that ;)
I hope so - but I figured I had better try to check the possibilities there are so I'd be able to ask the right questions ;)
Kind regards, Mark Neis
--
Mark Neis System Administrator GISA GmbH Chemnitztalstr. 13 09114 Chemnitz Tel. +49.(0)371.482.6737 Fax +49.(0)345.585.100.6737
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