[ARCHIVED] OLD recommendations backup storage, backup target

[kbing]

Hello,

I'm curious to see what others are using for the destination storage for the Veeam backups. I'm looking for a reliable low cost solution to store the backup files. We already went thru 800GB within 2 weeks so I suspect I'll need to at least double or triple that to get the 14 restore points that we would like to keep.

Any storage recommendations that you have been happy with?

[UPDATE] This thread is over 4 years old now, and because the product architecture has changed a lot in these past years, some previous recommendations no longer apply. This thread is now locked to let it die. I have created the new topic to continue this discussion in > Recommendations for backup storage, backup target

[Gostev]

Hello, this thread might be helpful to you
Offsite/disaster recovery options

[donikatz]

We're using a cheap home-built eSATA RAID5 DAS on a standalone Veeam server, but I've seen many folks recommend Drobo or Iomega StorCenter. Both are even VMware certified.

[Libertas]

Hello,

I'm curious to see what others are using for the destination storage for the Veeam backups. I'm looking for a reliable low cost solution to store the backup files. We already went thru 800GB within 2 weeks so I suspect I'll need to at least double or triple that to get the 14 restore points that we would like to keep.

Any storage recommendations that you have been happy with?

Hi kbing,

This may not apply to you but this is what I have setup at my work place:

1x HP ML370 G6 Server with 1x Xeon Quad Core 2.66Ghz + 4GB Ram + 12 3.5" SATA 1.5TB hard disks as our online backup server
Have used the HP Smart Array ACU utility to combine all the disk within 1 array but then split that array into 2 logical disks. Reason behind this was the fantastic read/write speed of 12 SATA disks in one array (blistering).
1st logical disk is 200GB for Windows 2008 Standard Server system partition + other software. Win 2008 is a pain to install on anything larger than 2TB
2nd logical disk is 12TB and initialised within Windows 2008 as a GPT DIsk, therefore can use all 12TB. This houses all our VM backups and also a large collection of Symantec Continious Protection Server (CPS) backups.

The VM backups are set to Monthly rotation with weekly full backups, + Change Block Tracking enabled for the vSphere hosts
The CPS backups are also set to the same sort of rotation/full. CPS is used because we require further agent based backups for things such as AD, Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint.

We also selectively capture data from that server onto a locally attached SATA enclosure which affords us upto 2TB of removable storage in the form of 2TB hard disk within slide caddies. This is done nightly and removed offsite.

Not sure what you think?

[rowdy]

We're just using two NAS devices, a Netgear ReadyNas 1100 and a Synology Rackstation 409+.
The ReadyNAS is older and in the future we will be going with Synology RS's only.
Both NAS'ses support SMB (Windows filesharing) and therefore they can be used as a destination in VeeAm quite easily.

Furthermore, the RS409+ also supports iSCSI and I also have (in a test scenario) a VM running off iSCSI.
The performance is good, with 'normal usage' in Windows 2008, is just as fast as local storage.
I haven't yet tried installing I/O intensive applications like SQL Server, I will try that later.

[dengar]

Anybody think about a NETGEAR ReadyNAS?

[Gostev]

There is some feedback in post just before yours

[kurt]

I'm thinking about getting a NAS box for more backup storage and I'm not sure whether I should go with a netgear readynas or a Drobo FS or something else. Does anyone have any suggestions or experience with those devices?

[Gostev]

Between these two I would choose NetGear. Also, you may want to check out QNAP.

[jwaynejones]

We use a ReadyNAS and it has served us very well.

[kurt]

I had an old readynas 1100 that worked good at the time. Plus their support seemed pretty good at the time so I'm thinking about going that route again. Is anyone using it as their actual VM SAN or only for backup?

[banstyle]

QNAP, NetGear, and Synology are the best low-end NAS you can buy.

Check out Smallnetbuilder.com for reviews and info: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/componen ... Itemid,190

I have 4x DS1511+ from Synology that run our Veeam backups. Total storage around 12TB RAID5. These boxes do line-rate iSCSI when writing... approximately 100 MB/S per box.
Great throughput, good support, easy to use.

-Seth

[rbos]

Hi everyone,

I am looking into a backup storage solution for our Veeam backups.
Currently we are using around 8TB of storage for all of our backups (Full and incremental).

What kind of storage are you using? I am looking into HP, Dell, Qnap etc.
We don't need performance for our backup array, but enough capacity. A small calculation results in a 25TB array which we can use for the coming 5 years.

Thanks for all feedback!

René Bos

[Gostev]

Short summary (from my perspective) and more links, hope this comes handy.

If you are looking for cheapest solution, this discussion may come useful > Veeam backup to NAS

If you want something really fast (for light speed backups and extensive vPower stuff usage), yet not too inexpensive, then look at getting low-end iSCSI Dell Equallogic or alike. And if you do not need enteprise brand/class storage, there are some very interesting options available on the market today for iSCSI storage, for example 32TB of storage for USD 7K.

If you want something really big to store lots of backups on, then look at hardware deduplicating storage (ExaGrid, HP StoreOnce, DataDomain etc. - you can search forums for these keywords for more info on those).

[rbos]

Hi,

I have done some research today and found that 'Thecus' has some really interesting storage devices for a good price.
Anyone has experience with Thecus? In specific the N12000 or N16000.

Thanks,
René

[Gostev]

That would be QNAP/Synology/ReadyNAS/Drobo/iomega etc. class ("cheapest solution" class above). I never heard about Thecus specifically, but one thing that seems to be extremely common among all these little guys is unreliable iSCSI implementation. I have seen a lot of complaints from end user about this. Even with QNAP, which are the most expensive among the bunch, and has the most advanced software. So, my advice is to be sure to research on this aspect. You will definitely want to write your backups via iSCSI.

Another important thing to watch out for with these soho/SMB solutions is LUN size limit. You do not want to buy NAS with max LUN size of 2TB (too small for backup target). I recall one customer posting about running into this here quite recently, understandably he was very upset about this.

Thanks.

[gshaw]

You will definitely want to write your backups via iSCSI

That's interesting, how much difference in speed is there between iSCSI and going to a CIFS share? Was looking at a QNAP using CIFS as our backup target but looking at the info above not so sure about it now?

[Gostev]

About same speed, unless storage is severely lacking CPU (such is in case with very low end SOHO solutions), in which case iSCSI is slower.

[gshaw]

Any particular reason for the iSCSI recommendation in that case?

[Gostev]

Reliability. Transactional NTFS is not supported with shares.

[gshaw]

Is that to say CIFS backups are likely to encounter problems at some point?

Ideally I'd just put the backups on a local drive of a dedicated server (which I guess is probably the best practice scenario) but it's finding a home for that server away from the main server room that's causing me problems at the moment.

[Gostev]

Yes, backup to CIFS is more likely to encounter problems for the above-mentioned reason, so SureBackup validation of your backups is essential. I would say, so far at least 1 customer in a hundreds have experienced and reported corruption issue when backing up to CIFS. Based on statistics, most oftenly this happens when backing up to low end SOHO NAS devices. I would assume that this happens because of questionable performance optimizations (or simply bugs) which affect reliability. For example, delayed processing of flush command.

There is also another opinion that the issue can be caused by Windows lazy writer's design, and thus does not depend on storage hardware backing the CIFS share.

[Bunce]

Reliability. .

We'd have to disagree based on our experiences.

The iscsi implementation on the cheaper devices are often very poor. Slapped together quickly, usually on top of their native storage, so they can advertise iscsi support and try and grab a piece of the SMB market.

Spend 5 minutes on the qnap iscsi forums and you'll see the number of complaints. In addition to this, the devices usually provide limited backup/replication support for iSCSI 'shares'.

If using these devices stick to what they excel in - usually NFS / SMB etc. The added advantage is that you can easily get access to this share via normal means for off loading backups to secondary storage (external HD, tape etc).

Unfortunately Veeam doesn't support native backups to NFS so easiest route is to use SMB, unless you wish to setup NFS client or mount an NFS vmdk. We've been doing this for over 12 months now (to a QNAP over SMB) without issue and solid performance. We than use the inbuilt RSYNC capability of the QNAP to replicate it offsite to another device as well as external USB HD (not possible without hacks if backing up to iSCSI on the QNAP's)

[Gostev]

We'd have to disagree based on our experiences.

The iscsi implementation on the cheaper devices are often very poor. Slapped together quickly, usually on top of their native storage, so they can advertise iscsi support and try and grab a piece of the SMB market.

Spend 5 minutes on the qnap iscsi forums and you'll see the number of complaints.

Well, not sure what you disagree with then, as I have said exactly this just a few posts above

We've been doing this for over 12 months now (to a QNAP over SMB) without issue and solid performance.

Just like many other customers are having great success doing this. But, as I've said, overall SMB/CIFS has bad support statistics as far as backup corruptions. As I've said, at least 1 customer in a few hundred experiences such issues when backing up to SMB/CIFS.

Unfortunately Veeam doesn't support native backups to NFS so easiest route is to use SMB, unless you wish to setup NFS client or mount an NFS vmdk.

For NFS, I would rather recommend mounting NFS share to a Linux server, and use this Linux as a target in Veeam. Again, from reliability perspective.

[Bunce]

Well, not sure what you disagree with then, as I have said exactly this just a few posts above

Given the option of iSCSI or CIFS/NFS on a low end device, we've found iSCSI to be far inferior - aka less-reliable. I thought you were recomending to go with iSCSI on these devices.. We wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole for the reasons posted above - experiences of others based on said forum posts would tend to agree - at least on the QNAPS.

[Gostev]

OK, since we are choosing between two evils here with low end devices, I must say that iSCSI failures might be kind of "better" for backup, because they make the whole job fail, and you are aware about the fact that you do not have a good backup by seeing error in your job email notification.

On the other hand, more reliable SMB/CIFS implementation will make your job report success all the time, but then there is "bad" statistics (not absolute, but comparing to other targets) on backup corruption when backing up to SMB/CIFS shares. This is why I highly recommend SureBackup-ing all your backups when using CIFS target to be on the safe side.

[backup10]

We backup all of our data to a 5T Exagrid. This seems to work well for us. It also has deduplication with it. Exagrids come in different sizes too. It is compatiable with Veeam Backup.

[bunger]

There are a lot of great recommendations here, but no one is mentioning much about offsite options. In addition to onsite storage, what is everyone doing to supplement the offsite considerations?

[Gostev]

Well, I am not sure why considerations for offsite backup storage should be different?
Most vendors provide efficient sync capabilities between their devices (ExaGrid, QNAP are just 2 examples).

[velowulf]

[merged]

I know that this doesn't help your particular issue but for those looking to use a NAS as a target we have a QNAP TS-659 Pro as a CIFS target and this is working extremely well. For the record I would always recommend QNAP or Synology over ReadyNAS as they are much better devices.

Gostev: when are we going to see the use of NFS targets being introduced into Veeam as opposed to CIFS or SSH. This would be a ginormous step forward (IMHO) and would improve backup speeds (compared to CIFS) while at the same time opening up the range of potential targets quite considerably! NFS is so widely used within the virtualisation market that I think this lack of support will count against you as your competitors who do support it close the gap between their offering and Veeam (it very nearly swayed me in my choice I have to say).