Backup to an SMB share or an iSCSI LUN? Please help!

[Sara]

Hey guys,

Total backup/storage newbie here! I have done a lot of research on this topic but can't seem to find a conclusive answer and I'm really hoping that some people will chime in.

This is my current situation:

I've set Veeam to do an entire system back up (plus incrementals) to an SMB share on my Synology NAS, mapped to a letter-drive on Windows 10 Pro, on my laptop. The network includes a 4-port 1GbE switch. The Synology's 2 NICs are connected to the switch via Cat 6 (with adaptive load balancing enabled) and the laptop is connected to the switch also via Cat 6. The Synology is running RAID 10 / btrfs / four 5900 RPM NAS-grade HDDs.

This setup works fine and the USB Veeam recovery media will let me do an all-volume full system restore, from the SMB share on the NAS, if/when disaster strikes!

I'm now wondering, if, instead, it would be a better idea to create a (file-level) iSCSI LUN on my Synology NAS, which would be mapped to, of course, a different letter-drive on my laptop.

Is this "appropriate?" I've heard that iSCSI LUNs are more of a SAN thing than a LAN thing...

Is an iSCSI LUN supposed to result in faster transfer speeds? CrystalDiskMark seems to rate the SMB share's performance and the iSCSI LUN's performance as pretty similar. However, when I just copy a several gigabyte file in Windows Explorer from the local SSD drive to the SMB share and then to the iSCSI LUN, it seems to be drastically faster with the iSCSI LUN.

Any other reasons to prefer one over the other? Security? Reliability? Etc? I know iSCSI is more of a pain to deal with, but I really don't mind dealing with that if there are otherwise compelling benefits...

Finally, if I needed to do a bare-metal restore from the USB media, is the Veeam recovery software able to get the Veeam backup image(s) off of the iSCSI LUN from the NAS, like it's able to get the Veeam backup image(s) off the SMB share from the NAS?

Thank you for any feedback. I really appreciate it.

[Dima P.]

Hi Sara,

Welcome to the community!

Is this "appropriate?"

Yes such approach should work. Cant comment on performance side of this question (I assume backup to iSCSI over LAN should flow faster than backup to a regular USB device). Another option might be to run a backup to regular share ( we have this option in backup job)

like it's able to get the Veeam backup image(s) off the SMB share from the NAS?

Veeam Recovery Media supports shared folder as a destination for backups, so its possible to perform recovery from backup files residing the shared folder destination.

[rekun]

Hi

This is what i would do:
Create a new backup user account on the Synology.
Create a new backup share on the Synology, and allow only access to that specific user.

Do NOT map the share as a network drive.
In the Veeam configuration wizard, select the "shared folder" option, and use the new account for login.

Do not use the backup user account for anything else.

This way you have protected for backup files much better against ransomware, some without a doubt be encrypt your backup files if you are using either network shares or iSCSI.

[Dima P.]

Rene,

Perfect and safe approach! If you are backing up multiple users – you can create a dedicated backup account for every laptop.