VMware SAN-direct system requirements

In addition to the Virtualization Protector requirements, the following requirements must be met to run VMware SAN-direct backups:

     Unitrends Recovery-Series or UEB on VMware system running version 7.0 or higher. SAN-direct backups are not supported for UEB on Hyper-V systems.

     VMware licensed 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, 5.5 ESX/ESXi environments with the following storage configurations:

– SAN storage mounted on the ESX server as a VMFS data store.

– SAN storage mounted directly by the ESX guest as a virtual RDM disk.

     SAN-direct backup can be used for all guest operating system versions.

     SAN-direct backup cannot be used to protect VMware templates.

     For optimal performance, it is recommended to use VAAI-compatible storage arrays with the SAN-direct feature.

For non-VAAI storage arrays, the ESX host may perform certain operations on the datastore while the SAN-direct backup is running, causing a SCSI reservation conflict. In this case, the backup will continue over the network instead of the SAN, which increases both backup time and network traffic on the LAN. To reduce the probability of reservation conflicts, follow VMware’s recommendations in the article Frequently Asked Questions for vStorage APIs for Array Integration (1021976).