Native Backup with iSCSI/LVM shared storage

[DANILO MONTAGNA]

Hi,

I'm going to setup a iSCSI/LVM HA Cluster with Proxmox and a iSCSI SAN DELL Storage for Proxmox VMs.

I read in the docs that Live Snapshots with iSCSI/LVM is not supported.. that can be managed here... but my doubt is regarding the Backup feature...

Will be possible to proxmox use the native backup feature to backup powered-on VMs on top of an iSCSI/LVM filesystem ? or will it also be not supported?

My understand is that backup feature depends on snapshots to work... so, it will not be possible, or am I wrong?

 

[dcsapak]

My understand is that backup feature depends on snapshots to work... so, it will not be possible, or am I wrong?

no, not really. the backup feature of qemu vms (described here in detail: https://git.proxmox.com/?p=pve-qemu...377bd1821479259e81d4e78d;hb=refs/heads/master )
has snapshot semantics, but does not rely on storage snapshot, in contrast to the 'snapshot' feature

so even if you cannot do 'snapshots' on lvm(thick) , the integrated 'snapshot backup' of vms work (i know the terms are a little bit confusing...)

for containers this is sadly not true, since we rely there on storage snapshots for backups (in snapshot mode)

 

[amir1986]

@DANILO MONTAGNA
I am trying to implement similar setup for our infra.
Basically Dell Storage (using iSCSI) to connect to our 3 servers as a shared storage. I was wondering if you can share your success story with me:

1- My dell SAN is 2 node in single chassis, have you encountered any issues with multipath if you had similar setup?
2- Can you vMotion without snapshot being available on iscsi?
3- How you backup works without snapshot? are you using Proxmox backup suit?

If you have anything to share so I can make the best and most flexible setup in this regard, it would be great

Thanks alot in advance

 

[bbgeek17]

I am not OP, but its been a little over two years since original discussion so you might not hear from OP too soon.

My 2c :
1) Dell/EMC have tens if not hundreds of thousands customers using Linux as client with multipath to their storage. It should be pretty stable. Multipath is a well-known core package in practically every Linux distribution, used potentially on millions of systems. You should be able to get it running.
2) vMotion is of course VMware specific technology, however if you refer to VM move across nodes - with shared storage snapshots are not used for VM migration. A QEMU snapshot is taken of the VM state and storage is attached/mounted/activated on target side
3) Native Proxmox Backup via PBS does not use storage snapshots or clones, unfortunately. But on the other hand it means it has no dependencies on snapshot functionality.

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