Backup Repository(s) Redesign

[gkennedy]

Hi all,

As our environment and our requirements have changed, we find ourselves running out of space on our repositories, and spending too much time juggling jobs around.

Currently we have 2 separate repositories, with the following specs also running as proxies:

Veeam Repository 1
Dell R710
Dual E5-2620
32GB RAM
10TB Usable Raid 10
Windows Server 2012 R2

Veeam Repository 2
Dell R720
Dual E5-2620
32GB RAM
22TB Usable Raid 10
Windows Server 2012 R2

We have acquired two of the following servers to compliment our current repositories:

Dell R720XD
Dual E5-2620v2
64GB RAM
72 TB RAW Storage (12x6TB Drives)

I was wondering if I could spark a discussion on how to go about the redesign. On one hand it's easy to just configure these servers as individual repositories, and balance jobs across all 4 repositories. What I'd like to do though, is aggregate all 4 servers into 1 repository (from a storage perspective) but still maintain the processing power of all 4.

One idea I had was to use vSphere Virtual SAN. Put all 4 servers into a cluster, create the volumes, and use VMs for the backup proxies. I've also done some brief reading on Storage Spaces, but unsure if that technology is appropriate for my goals.

I'm continuing to research on this matter, but welcome any comments/ideas. Also if you have done something similar, or face similar challenges, I'd love to hear what you've done.

Cheers,
Gavin

[Shestakov]

Hi Gavin!
Are you going to have a single copy of backup or 2 copies as recommended?
If you`d like to one copy, combining repositories to a vSAN is a great idea. For 2 copies, I would split it to two repositories clusters. Thanks!

[gkennedy]

Hi!

Onsite to disk, offsite to rotating external drives, then we ship a copy off to Amazon to look after at interval.

Do you know of any customers doing the vSAN option with multiple servers to form one large repository? Anyone out there prepared to chime in on this?

Cheers,
Gav

[Shestakov]

Sounds good.
I`m not aware of the customers` infrastructures, but the configuration looks workable. Let`s see if someone chimes in.
Thanks!

[dellock6]

My only doubt about using VSAN as a repository is the excessive number of layers: vsan, the vmdk, the vm running the repository role and its file system on the vmdk. Plus the licenses for VSAN itself.
There are other simpler solutions around, like Ceph (shameless plug here, you can look at my blog in signature to learn more, I have a complete blog series about it) ScaleIO from EMC which is now free, or even Storage Spaces.