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This article documents how to set up Direct SAN Access for use with Veeam Backup & Replication. The Direct SAN access transport mode is recommended for VMs whose disks are located on shared VMFS SAN LUNs that are connected to ESXi hosts over FC, FCoE, iSCSI, and on shared SAS storage. In the Direct SAN access transport mode, Veeam Backup & Replication leverages VMware VADP to transport VM data directly from and to FC, FCoE, or iSCSI storage over the SAN. VM data travels over the SAN, bypassing ESXi hosts and the LAN. The Direct SAN access transport method provides the fastest data transfer speed and produces no load on the production network. Note: For storage connected using NFS, review Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide > Transport Modes > Direct NFS Access.
Preventing Data Loss Once a VMFS volume is presented to the Veeam VMware Backup Proxy it should always remain in an offline state and never be initialized. If by user action the volumes are ever initialized production data will be lost as the volume's partition table will be changed to GPT or MBR. Veeam Backup & Replication prevents the Windows OS from initializing the volume automatically by changing the SAN Policy to "Offline Shared" when a server is added as a VMware Backup Proxy. If a single server is used as both a VMware Backup Proxy using Direct SAN transport mode, and a Veeam Repository using volumes presented via iSCSI and/or FC, care must be taken when managing disks.
The SAN Policy of a Windows OS can be checked using the DISKPART, with the command SAN.
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