In this blog post, I will take a quick look at the integration between Nimble Storage and Veeam 9.5. This post has been created using a beta version of Veeam 9.5 and things may change or look slightly different with the production release.
To get started the Nimble Storage Array needs to be added to the Veeam Server. This is found under the Storage Infrastructure option in the management console.
Clicking the Add Storage button brings up the wizard used to connect to the Nimble Storage array. As you can see the Nimble logo is still a work in progress – I’m sure it will look very cool with RTM!
The wizard will prompt you to configure DNS/IP addresses, credentials and access details to create the connection. Once this is complete you should see your Nimble Storage array and volumes listed under Storage Infrastructure.
To demonstrate the integration, I’ve created a new volume on the Nimble array called NIM-VEEAM-TEST with a protection policy retaining 24 hourly snapshots. I’ve deployed 3 test virtual machines to this volume in vSphere and created a simple backup job ensuring the “backup from storage snapshots” option is selected in the advanced settings of the job.
The results of the job below show the storage snapshot being created during the backup process.
Jumping over to vCenter we can see the virtual machine snapshot was held open for less than 30 seconds.
To restore virtual machines there is the choice of using the last backup or storage snapshots. I’m retaining 24 hourly snapshots on the Nimble array so I have 24 restore points to choose from.
Right clicking the virtual machine will bring up the various restore options available including one of the best features in Veeam – Instant VM recovery.
As you can see I’m able to pick a restore point from any hour during the last day. Changing the protection policy on the Nimble Storage array will allow this to
I’ve just kept to the basics in this posts and future content will cover some advanced features such as using storage snapshots with virtual labs and Nimble Replication partners for offsite data protection.
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