Replication with offline backup scenario, will this work?

Hi,

I am looking at the possiblity of implementing open-e iSCSI, we currently use NAS-R3. We would liek to setup the following if it is possible:

1. Primary iSCSI server at data centre with multiple volumes for various servers
2. Secondary iSCSI Server at Head Office
3. Volume replication from primary to secondary
4. Tape library (incompatible with open-e) attached to windows server at Head Office.

Can we attach the replicated volumes that are sitting on the secondary iSCSI server to the backup server? effectively allowing us to have offline backups of the replicated data, as the backup server would see the data as local drives?

The question comes as I know you can't attached 2 initiators to the same volume and see the same data, but does that still applyif your connecting the second initiator to a different iSCSI server?

I'm guessing the only reason you couldn't is because the replicated volumes would retain some sort of identifier info that will make the volumes party to the same issue as if both servers were connecting to the same iSCSI server.

Cheers
Paul

Paul,

You can assign a snapshot to the logical volume on your secondary server to be backed up, then map a network drive on your backup server to the snapshot on the secondary server. The snapshot effectively becomes like a share on your network.

Then just create a backup task using the ip address of your backup server as your destination.

-Asaph

Hi Asaph,

Thanks for the prompt reply, I hadn't thought of that but I was trying to avoid backing it up over NAS as I would like to take advantage of the performance of iSCSI over NAS to keep the backup times down. There are a lot of small files 10,000-100,000 being changed and added to the data daily.

Are you able to confirm my initial thoughts?

'I'm guessing the only reason you couldn't is because the replicated volumes would retain some sort of identifier info that will make the volumes party to the same issue as if both servers were connecting to the same iSCSI server'

Therefore I can't connect the backup server via iSCSI. If so then what you have suggested seems to make most sense.

Cheers
Paul

Hi Paul. ...hope you had a good weekend.

We've used the scenario I described in our backup process, but there's no provision to do a backup directly using iSCSI. What you do is a backup from the destination server via a snapshot from the host side. Just take a snapshot of your replicated data, then point your backup task on the host server to that snapshot as your source and send the backup to another destination on your network.

-Asaph