Veeam PowerMax Plug-in Update

Let me start by getting the obvious question out of the way. No, the update is not about REST 10 support. This is a patch for the current plug-in to enhance functionality with REST 9. I highly recommend it, however, so please read on if you use the plug-in.

PowerMax Plug-in Version 1.0.90

Veeam posted our latest release to the PowerMax Plug-in today which contains an important enhancement to the code. Recall that Veeam owns the plug-in from a support standpoint, so even though we develop and produce the plug-in updates, it must go through their process to post. You can find the plug-in in the same location as the original since it replaces it.

The installation instructions point to a KB: https://www.veeam.com/kb4200.

The important difference to note from the original plug-in is that there is a minimum version of Veeam B&R release 11 that is required. The GA release of the plug-in supported Veeam B&R 10. Be sure you are on that patched level or higher before installing the plug-in.

Enhancements

While the update contains general performance and stability changes, the biggest enhancement is to backups using linked snapshots. When Veeam backs up VMs on PowerMax storage with the plug-in, we take a snapshot of the underlying device, link it to a newly created target device, and then it gets exported (masked) to the backup host. Once the backup is complete, we attempt to unlink the snapshot and delete the target device. If we are unable to unlink, we tag the device for future cleanup when the system or a user runs a storage rescan. This is called out in the white paper:

Because Veaam’s default behavior for storage rescans is to run one no sooner than once a day, and as we’ve had some customers miss the callout in the documentation, large, busy environments are seeing many of these linked snapshots hanging around too long. As long as they are there, they take up important resources unnecessarily. The updated plug-in alleviates that by removing the linked snapshots the first time, rather than waiting for the cleanup process. This ensures resources are returned to the array’s global pool sooner.

Now if you are currently running Veeam B&R version 10.x and do not experience these issues, there certainly is no urgency to install the update as it would require a Veeam software update. But if you are at a supported version already, the update does have benefit beyond the linked snapshot enhancement so it is worthwhile.

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