Transport Modes in VMware Backup:
- SAN Mode (Storage area Network) is supported for directly connected storage using Fibre Channel (FC) or Internet SCSI (iSCSI) protocols.
- HotAdd Mode, the Virtual Server Agent is installed on a virtual machine residing on ESX server.
- Local Area Network (NBD and NBDSSL) - NBD (Network Block Device) and NBDSSL (Encrypted NBD) transmit data over the TCP/IP connection between the ESX server and the proxy computer
SAN and HotAdd transport can enable LAN-free backups and restores. In most scenarios backup and restore using SAN and HotAdd transport are faster than local area network (LAN) operations using network block device (NBD) or secure NBD (NBDSSL).
SAN restores using thin disk provisioning can be slower than LAN restores, performance can be improved by using NBD or by setting the transport mode to SAN and forcing the disk type to thick, which uses eager zero provisioning.
Advanced transport methods (SAN and HotAdd) replace the proxy based VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) solutions.
