Comparing agentless backup transport methods
Topic
This article discusses best practices for optimizing backup speeds when backing up a physical Datto device to a VMware environment.
Environment
- Datto SIRIS
Description
Agentless systems: the HotAdd transport method
The most efficient transport method currently available for Datto Agentless backups is the HotAdd transport method.
- Currently this transport is available only on vSIRIS virtual appliances.
- HotAdd uses the native ESXi I/O stack, and the transport itself doesn't traverse the network.
- VMware snapshots of the protected VM's virtual disks are attached directly to the vSIRIS VM for agentless backups.
Physical Datto devices: the NBD-SSL transport method
- The NBD-SSL transport method for agentless backups of VMware VMs destined for a physical SIRIS.
- Transport speed is affected by I/O performance on both the VMware datastores and the Datto appliance, as well as the network data path through which the backups travel.
- Backup traffic flows from the VMkernel port, via port 902 to the physical SIRIS device.
- If the VMs are located on network storage, the backup data path flows from the SAN to the ESXi host, and then to the physical SIRIS via port 902.
Increasing NBD-SSL Throughput
- Use 10Gbit networking hardware for the VMkernel management ports.
- Ensure the entire data-path between the VMkernel ports and the physical SIRIS, including the link to the SIRIS itself, is 10Gbit.
- Enable jumbo frames across the entire data-path between the VMkernel ports and the physical SIRIS.
- If the ESXi hosts have both 1Gbit and 10Gbit management NICs, ensure that the backup traffic is flowing over the 10Gbit NICs, not the 1Gbit NICs.
- If possible, push all other management traffic (for example, provisioning or vMotion) over to a different VMkernel NIC than the one being used for agentless backup traffic.
Limitations
- Per VMware's documentation, NBD backups should not be performed on virtual disks larger than 1TB each.
- For LAN transport, virtual disks cannot be larger than 1TB each. As the name implies, this transport mode is not LAN-free, unlike SAN and HotAdd transport.
- VMware's trasport speed caps.
Additional Resources
- Virtual Disk Transport Methods (external article)