Interesting Synology behaviour (testing)

[pkelly_sts]

Although we use full-fat VBR for our main sites I've been evaluating backup options for ultra small sites, potentially in conjunction with a small Synology NAS, with a view to getting efficient off-site backups so I thought I'd pit Veeam against Windows Backup (which I've always considered a rather amateur TBH) but had some surprising though not exhaustive results.

The scenario I've been testing is:

Source server is actually the boot volume of our physical VBR repository server so the primary data changes are Veeams (extensive!) log files pretty much.

I mounted a Synology SMB share on the server and run Veeam EndPoint backups to it. Then, use Synology snapshot replication to replicate this share to another offsite synology.

Secondly, I mounted an iSCSI LUN to the same server from the same synology and configured Wndows Backup to send backups to it, again, replicating this LUN to the second offsite synology.

Backup performance is one thing, offsite copies is another. As expected, Veeam daily backup trounces Windows backup full stop, no surprises there, and the replication of the data to the second Synology initially was pretty comparable, even once it got to the point where max restore points were reached and the .VBK was updated daily, but what I've found over time is that the replication of the Veeam share has got progressively slower & slower (with a clear trajectory to continue to slow down) from an initial 2.5hrs or so about 5 weeks ago when first started, to now taking 12hrs (and growing each day) currently, whereas the replication of the windows backup/iSCSI LUN has been pretty consistent throughout at around 40 mins or so per day.

Meant to mention, daily change rate is around 20gb or so.

It would be interesting to move the Veeam backup to an iSCSI LUN as well to determine whether it's an inherent issue with snapshot/replica of shares as opposed to iSCSI LUNS, but I thought I'd post my findings here in case any smaller users were interested. If I try the iSCSI route I'll report back.

I'll probably post the same in the Synology forums to see if there are any useful comments as to the performance drain of the share replication...

[leo.white]

I also have a bunch of smaller sites that i am thinking about using the agent to backup. We currently use a lot of small Synology devices. That is my first choice for storing the backups. I was thinking about using CIFS Share as a target and then using Veeam Backup Copy job to replicate the data to the data center.

What size Synology are you using?
why Synology Replication over Veeam Backup Copy job?

[pkelly_sts]

I'm testing with RS816+ ATM. Veeam copy job is not available to me in these scenarios as I'm testing for small sites that don't have the full VBR solution available to them, just relying on what Endpoint can offer.

Bear in mind that anything other than small-scale backups don't perform well to SMB shares due to the IOPS requirements & the fact that you won't have a proxy at the target.

[Tebinium]

What do you consider small scale?

[pkelly_sts]

Personally I'd consider small-scale to be <=5 VMs but I've only tested/trialled up to 3 so far & not likely to need any more than that in the near future (in this scenario).

On this side of things (a sideline to my main day-job) my target market is small shops with a single ESXi Free host (so can't use VBR) so I use Veeam Agent for a single VM > Synology1, then Snapshot Replication from Synology-1 to Synology-2 (off-site).

[Tebinium]

Thanks for that.