During backup operations, the VSA reads the virtual machine disks (VMDKs) directly over the NAS, performs block level deduplication, and then sends the data to a MediaAgent that writes to the shared library. The data is transferred over the IP network.
This mode will be used when:
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Virtual machines to be backed up are on NFS datastores.
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Each proxy that performs backup operations is a Windows or Linux physical server, or a Linux virtual machine proxy.
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Each MediaAgent has local access to directly connected storage using a shared mount path.
Physical Proxy Installations
In a physical proxy configuration, the VSA and MediaAgent are installed on a physical server with visibility into the NAS network. A purely physical implementation performs NAS device only backups.
When to Use
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Datastores are configured on an NFS.
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Windows or Linux physical computers, or Linux virtual machine proxy servers has NFS access to datastore LUNs.
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For NetApp NFSv3, you can explicitly select the NAS transport mode to perform IntelliSnap backups or backup copy operations. Backup copy operations do not mount the hardware snapshot datastore to a proxy ESXi host (ESX proxyless backups).
For NetApp NFSv4 and other NFS storage vendors, IntelliSnap backup copy operations mount the hardware snapshot datastore to a proxy ESX server and use the NBD transport mode.
For subclients that contain virtual machines from both VMFS and NFS datastores:
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Backup copy operations for VMs on NFS datastores mount the hardware snapshot datastore to a proxy ESX server and use the NBD transport mode.
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Backup copy operations for VMs on VMFS datastores use the SAN transport mode if array and volume mappings are exposed to a VSA proxy on a physical machine. If the VSA proxy is a virtual machine or if array and volume mappings are not exposed to the VSA proxy, backup copy operations mount the hardware snapshot datastore to a proxy ESX server and use the NBD transport mode.
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When Not to Use
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Local datastores are only available within the ESX Server environment.
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NAS transport is not available for storage accessed using the FC or iSCSI SAN protocol.