New Backup Target/server Supermicro

[rklingaman]

I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking about where do we go for new backup target. I know there is recommendations on local storage with hard disks but the thing that has always turned me off that is the storage is controlled by one point of failure and that is why we have always went with SAN disk arrays with multiple controllers and redundancy (we have a FC storage network here).

However i have come across some interesting SuperMicro solutions that seem to solve all my problems they are the Super Storage Bridge Bay or their Cluster in a Box solutions.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/sbb.cfm

Or you can get a fully installed solution with Windows Server 2012:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/CiB.cfm

We would basically put Veeam directly on the box put some FC cards in it to access the existing Tape Library and Production storage.

My questions or if you have an general opinions about these boxes please let me know.

Best choice for disks:

We need an initial storage of around 25TB

The fully installed solution is using a combination of a few SSD along with 7200RPM NL SAS drives for a bigger initial storage foot print.

or we can put in 10k SAS drives but capacity for 1.2 TB. This option would get us a faster main unit then get an expansion JBOD shelf (initially or maybe down the line) with the slower 7200 NL SAS drives and use veeams backup copy option to move the older restore points there.

Raid Type

I'm still doing some digging on the boxes to see if they do Hardware Raid or as it seems with the preinstalled version I think it is using Storage Spaces from Server 2012.

All I can think of at the moment would appreciate anybody's response to using something like this.

[dellock6]

hi Ryan,
first of all thanks for the heads-up , somehow I missed those new solutions from SuperMicro and they are really interesting!

Not sure anyway the design you are thinking about is the best one: what about still having the VBR server as a virtual machine, and installing in this cluster just the repository and tape server roles? In this way you can protect both in the best way, and I'm not sure all Veeam components can be clustered. Also, by running VBR there, you will also need a clustered version of MS SQL, while running in a VM the management server will be protected by the hypervisor.

Anyway, about the disks, you can leverage Windows 2012 R2 automated storage tiering and with it use some SSDs in the storage, and use fat sata disks in the other slots. I've never personally used this, so you are better read more around for feedback, but with it I think you can also give up on an expensive raid card and do a software raid with storage spaces.

For raid, the best performances come with Raid10 usually, since the removal of parity speeds up both reads and writes. The cons obviously is the consumed storage space, but with that whitebox you can use as I said SSD for caching, and some large sata disks, like 4 or even 6 TB.

Luca.

[rklingaman]

I do need to do more reading on the clustering of 2012 as I don't have much experience with it. I wouldn't think I wouldn't think I need a clustered SQL though as I'm just running my SQL server virtual and veeam access it over the network (correct me if I'm wrong).

I might have to look at making the veeam management server virtual might start making the best sense. If I do this and have the tape server role and repositories there it will still pull data from the fiber channel san write it directly to the local storage and then for tape pull from storage and write directly to tape(this is how it works at the moment)? No network traffic on the backup?

[dellock6]

No, obviously if SQL is external to Veeam, it will have its own availability solutions, and HA offered by the hypervisor is indeed enough in most of the deployments. And yes my suggestion is to make the entire VBR server virtual and leverage HA; avoiding clustering on VBR makes the deployment much more simple.

Correct, backups to tape works with a dataflow from repository to tape server, since you are going to deploy both roles in the same machine, there will be no traffic going outside of this server.

[rklingaman]

We are getting close to moving ahead with this box and just wanted to bump this thread and give my general plans to see if there is any problems I'm going to have.

Plan to move the veeam management server into a VM ahead of time and turn my existing box into a proxy with the tape server role.

Install the new box as a 2012R2 Cluster attach it to the fiber channel so it can see my SAN and install it as a proxy to the veeam server so that I Can test everything before moving any production backups to it.

After production backups are going to it move the tape server role over to it and off the old box.

[dellock6]

I don't see problems in this plan, I'd do the same.
Keep us updated on the clustering of Veeam services on that machine, really curious.

thanks,
Luca.