B&R 9.5 to Synology - current best solution

[K.vanderlinden]

Guys,

Thank you for this thread, it's super interesting.

Now I have a question about adding a NAS to a working backup infrastructure. Current setup:

- 3 ESXi hosts connected to 2 different iSCSI boxes on 2 different sites (Dell Powervault)
- 1 Site is the main site, this site has 2 ESXi hosts
- Main site has a physical server with Veeam BR installed and has a shit ton of storage and mem.
- Everything is backupped to the physical server mentioned above.
- Offsite location does not have space for another physical server, so we want to use a VM for BR.
- We want to use a NAS to make a secondary repository.

Now, do I need to add the NAS as an ISCSi LUN to the offsite ESXi host and create a VM on it with Windows 2016 + Refs? Then use the that LUN as the target repository?

Let me know if you think i'm talking nonsense, best practices are welcome (dont tell me to not use a NAS, I know man...) and any other tips/tricks.
Thanks!

Kr,

Kim

[nielsengelen]

Correct, you can deploy a VM on the ESXi hosts. Afterwards create an iSCSI LUN and add it to to Windows 2016 VM and use ReFS, you can do this directly on the Windows server without passing via ESXi so you have full access to the repository and no additional layer. Create a job and point it there and you are good to go.

Which storage you pick underneath is up to you but I would not use the same NAS as the Synology box you have, maybe some local disk as this way you won't use IOPS on the backup disk for just hosting a VM.

[sg_sc]

The Proxy VM can be small, but as vmniels says, don't put the VM on the NAS. Put it on the production storage of the ESXi host, then attach the NAS via iSCSI, format the disk (if you use ReFS, use 64K) and create a BR on it.

[K.vanderlinden]

Correct, you can deploy a VM on the ESXi hosts. Afterwards create an iSCSI LUN and add it to to Windows 2016 VM and use ReFS, you can do this directly on the Windows server without passing via ESXi so you have full access to the repository and no additional layer. Create a job and point it there and you are good to go.

Which storage you pick underneath is up to you but I would not use the same NAS as the Synology box you have, maybe some local disk as this way you won't use IOPS on the backup disk for just hosting a VM.

Hi,

Thanks so much for your reaction. I've configured my NAS with a LUN and installed a VM with Windows 2016 on my ESXi (local storage) so that I can attach the LUN directly to the OS instead of going through the Host.

However, when using the ISCSi Iniator I keep getting an error: "the target has already been logged in via an iscsi session"
I can see the device, and even the available storage, but I cant mount it as a disk. Any idea what this error could be? I've searched the internet but couldn't find much about it.

[foggy]

Please contact technical support for assistance with this. Thanks.

[B.F.]

Greetings,

Excellent thread with all sorts of good info. I have a few additional questions.

Seems like everyone has B&R installed on a physical box. Is it a bad idea having it setup as a VM and have an MSA hooked up to the VM's VMware host?

If one were to have a seperate physical server connected to a Synology or some other iSCSI MSA, can the datamover be installed on a Windows Server Core 2016? If so, is there any advantage?

Final, have you ever experimented with ReFS in your setup?

Thanks!

[foggy]

Seems like everyone has B&R installed on a physical box. Is it a bad idea having it setup as a VM and have an MSA hooked up to the VM's VMware host?

Not a bad idea at all, just a matter of preference and whether you use backup server as a proxy (i.e. direct SAN vs hotadd).

If one were to have a seperate physical server connected to a Synology or some other iSCSI MSA, can the datamover be installed on a Windows Server Core 2016? If so, is there any advantage?

Yes, it can. No specific advantages.

Final, have you ever experimented with ReFS in your setup?

Yes, please search the forum for REFS-related topics.

Thanks!

[sg_sc]

With smaller setups the B&R server is usually a VM.
For bigger environments it makes sens DR-wise to have the B&R server not on your primary production storage.

[DRAGONKZ]

I'm just after some advice as to the preferred option for setting up my backup repository for my home lab (I'm using a NFR license).

My environment consists of 4 x HP DL20 servers running all flash vSAN, 10Gb switches, and a Synology RS815+

I've got 4 x 4TB WD Red Pros configured in RAID 10, and 2 x 1Gb NICs from the Synology dedicated for storage/backup traffic.

My complete environment is virtualised, including my Veeam backup server which is running on Windows 2016.

From what I've read, the Synology unit's aren't the best performing, but if using them then normally iSCSI is used due to it be being faster than SMB.

Assuming that viewpoint is still valid, I'm after some advise as to the best way to present the space to my Veeam backup server to use as a repository.

Should I simply be connecting the Synology via iSCSI to my hosts, create a LUN with the full size of the RAID 10 volume and then present this as a RDM to my Veeam backup server VM?

Assuming so, are there recommendations for the cluster size and file system type for the disk once presented in Windows?

My end goal is to be able to get the most out of the solution feature set wise, and performance wise.

Suggestions/Opinions are very welcome!

Thanks!

[PTide]

Hi Stephen, and welcome to the community.

Please review this thread for recommendations.

Also keep in mind the following:

1) There is no need to present LUN to ESXi host - you can mount it directly within the guest instead.
2) The subject has been already discussed on this forum for a while, you can find a couple of interesting topics if you use "Search"

Thanks

[leithm]

fwiw i have found with Synology units

iscsi block lun + Server 2016 REFS + synthetic fulls + block clone = the best it is going to get

Stick the iscsi on it's own vlan of course

refs really saved the day with NAS appliances. of course active fulls are ok but

1. take much longer
2. consume much more space. I generally say you need to complete two full backup retention periods if using active fulls before you can discard. this is of course to maintain maximum speed when backing up

the other alternatives are not worth exploring, trust me. (unless you have very small data sets)

Don't forget to do that switch independent teaming mode on the Synology to aggregate links. that'd only be with multiple tcp streams though in one direction. i prefer it over lacp these days. It's just easier and works.

i am going to be rejigging a clients backup systems soon and will be doing disk backup to refs 2016 repos on local disk to a server with 10gbe & RDMA (SMB direct ahoy)

[sg_sc]

Agreed.
ISCSI LUN on the Synology mounted in the Backup server with ISCSI iniator and formatted with ReFS 64K on Windows 2016 or WIN 10 WORKSTATION.
Synthetic fulls that don't take up space and fast merging of incrementals.

[jamerson]

Hi guys,
i know this been old but i need some info,
we have a synolgy with isci with multi access,
we have isci target on the veeam server as refs, and the backup is running there.
my questions is the second office is connected over the VPN and we want to add the isci to their veeam so it will deploy offsite jobs there.
is this advisable to do or add the share folder smb instead?

Thank you

[PTide]

Hi,

It's not clear what exactly you want to do. Are you going to connect Veeam server iSCSI initiator (site A) to Synology iSCSI target (site B) over VPN? If so, then it is not a good idea to connect iSCIS over VPN as it will be slow.
If you want to run offsite job over VPN, you should setup a Backup Copy Job with WAN accelerators instead.

Thanks!