Hi @ZachHeise ,

File Agent with block level backups using striped volumes is note supported.

ref:  Permanent mount of Striped, Mirrored, and RAID-5 dynamic volumes are not supported. | Known Issues (commvault.com)

Regards,

Suleman

Darn - thanks for letting me know. I see it’s listed as a Known Issue, rather than simply a System Requirement to not be on striped volumes. May I ask, Suleman, if this is something that is being looked at to be addressed in a future release?

Hi @ZachHeise ,

There is no information about that currently, but you can raise a CMR by involving your Account Manager to check if this will get included.

Regards,

Suleman 

Hi @SMD,

I’m confused about the documentation you linked. That appears to be for the Auto Recovery, which is not what we are doing.

I’m looking at the system requirements for block-level backups here and it says it supports Linux LVM, but does not mention not supporting dynamic volumes. There is also a KB article here that does not mention not supporting dynamic volumes. Can you link to documentation that dynamic volumes (such as a striped volume) using LInux LVM are not supported for block-level backup using the Unix file system agent while doing incremental backups to a disk library?

Thanks,
Reba

Hi @ZachHeise 

Could you please confirm whether you are using an on-premise server or a cloud image? Currently, we lack driver support for cloud-hosted infrastructure.

We are currently validating block level support for striped volumes on on-prem AlmaLinux 9.3 in the Engineering lab. I will provide you with an update next week.

Thanks,

Sparsh

Hi sparsh - it’s all on-prem in our own datacenter. Thanks for any update you can provide!

Hi @ZachHeise 

Are you intending to utilize Hardware Snapshot (Intellisnap) with block-level functionality or opt for a straightforward block-level approach?

Regards,

Sparsh Gupta

Hello again Sparsh - our SAN is a Dell Powervault ME5, which I don’t believe supports Intellisnap. So since that is the case, I believe that the second option you mentioned - just block-level backups without hardware snapshot backing - is our only option.

Hi @ZachHeise 

What filesystem type do you have on these striped volumes? Is it XFS or ext4?

Thanks,

Sparsh

It is XFS.

Hi @SparshGupta , we heard from our account’s senior systems engineer (SLED) on March 20 that, quote “I just got word from Dev that block level backups are supported in 11.32 for striped volumes running Alma 9.”

The agent, Matt P, mentioned your name in particular, so I think you and he might have been working together.

However, when we opened up a ticket with Commvault because we were having trouble enabling the Block Level option, ticket number 240327-592, the agent assigned to the ticket said we heard wrong, and that Alma 9 linux was not supported.

So now we’re not sure what is going on and what to believe?

@ZachHeise - 

I want to address any confusion that may have arisen between our engineering and support teams. Regrettably, I was unavailable this week, which may have caused some delays in our communication.

I want to assure you that we have validated block level support for AlmaLinux 9.3 (Kernel - 5.14.0-362.8.1.el9_3.x86_64) in our lab. Our tests have shown that it performs as expected. Following the RHEL documentation you shared, we successfully created XFS striped volumes (using hyperv local disk storage), and our block-level backup operations proceeded without any issues.

We are also getting our Commvault documentation updated with the support for this OS flavour.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Thanks,

Sparsh

@ZachHeise - Also, are you still facing any issues with enabling block level? Can you provide some more details?

Edit : We will track it via ticket 240327-592