Backing up StarWind VSAN for vSphere targets

[brianpauler]

Hi everyone

We've been going through the process of migrating from our ageing EqualLogic boxes to a new hyperconverged setup running StarWind VSAN for vSphere. So far StarWind have been very helpful with setting everything up for us. However, we have hit a problem.

Unfortunately it seems that StarWind VSAN for vSphere only allows connections from the ESXi iSCSI Initiator, meaning I can't use a Veeam proxy running on Windows to connect to StarWind targets. As a result, it looks like I can't use SAN backups anymore. Even with the new SSDs we have, I'm worried our backups are going to slow down.

Has anyone found a way around this? Alternatively, what's the best alternative to SAN backups?

And finally, could someone from Veeam maybe give StarWind a nudge about getting SAN backups working on VSAN for vSphere? Surely I can't be the only person that wants to do this?

[yaroslav (staff)]

Hi,

Welcome to StarWind Forum.
First, you must not backup StarWind VMs and anything in StarWind VM but StarWind.cfg. See more at https://www.starwindsoftware.com/best-p ... practices/. Make sure to stick with this advice to avoid downtime.

StarWind VSAN presents your storage as a target that is to be connected to an Initiator. It can be ESXi or Windows Server. Here, odds of file systems come into play, say, you cannot format the target as VMFS and connect it to WS to format as NTFS, or other way around, or connect an NTFS volume to 2 or more initiators.

This being said, you cannot connect StarWind HA device to ESXi and via Veeam Proxy.