QNAP ARM NAS with iSCSI as Remote Repository possible?

[zak1976]

Hi,
I am new to this forum, but we are useing Veeam (V10, latest patchlevel) for many years now.
We are in the process of joining another company and on my site we habe to do the IT services.

On site i use Veeam on a dedicated bare metal server to backup all our hyper-v vms with a backup to disk (internal HW Raid 5 storage on the backup server) and then to tape on lto 8 autoloader.
This works great and is very fast due to 10gbit network connection and fast storage systems, backup data are 10tb.
By the way all systems are windows server 2012r2 (vms, hypervisor, backup server).

In the near future i will have to backup another fileserver in our remote office.
I only have one hardware server on the remote site, so the server will be windows server 2019 only hyper v role installed, one vm as file/printserver, one vm as dc and wsus and maybe a dedicated vm as veeam backup proxy if this make sense, otherwise i will install the veeam proxy on one of the other vms.
All vms are windows server 2019. The backup volume is 10tb on remote site

The first backup repository should be an "cheap" NAS (QNAP) with around 30TB capacity (raid 5, 10gbit network connection), configuration is only for Veeam as backup repository configured as iSCSI target.
What are the reqirements for the NAS in this particular use case? I have read that for Veeam B&R that it have to be an x86 CPU NO ARM, but is this realy a requirement when I only want to use the NAS as iSCSI repository target? If i can yous a NAS with ARM CPU the nas is way more cheaper and if the raid and network performance is also good enough we will save the money...

[soncscy]

Heya,

I wouldn't think that it matters if you use iscsi because the in that case, it would be like a drive attached to a windows or linux server. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but I think the concern about ARM vs x86 is just about the server that supports Veeam roles. In this case, whatever you initiate the iscsi connection from is what needs to meet the x86 requirement.

[Andreas Neufert]

Correct, only if you run the Storage directly as Linux Repository (our Software runs on the Storage) you need an Intel x86-64 compatible CPU. For iSCSI/NFS/SMB it do not matter.
I do not know regarding pricing, but my guess is that you could get for nearly the same price as the 40TB storage a small windows server. The advantage would be if you install there Hyper-V as well is that you could restore the workloads there if the primary Hyper-V server is gone (at least for some time until you have a replacement server). This works in v11 as well for VMware envionments where we will offer Instant Restore from VMware VMs to Hyper-V.

[zak1976]

Thank you for your answer, I am really thinking about adding a NAS as iSCSI repository, as an alternative I requested a dell t340 with no hard drives (because i can get the seagate Exos way cheaper on the free market, brezels on ebay...) and this server is not so much more expensive than the QNAP NAS (Qlogic 10Gbit sfp+ avalible/Twinax on the Dell Server), the main cost intensive problem is the Windows Server license...
I have no experience with the qnap nas, i hope that the raid 5 option and equipped with 10gbit nic, the server is able to do min. 400mb/s write performance from veeam backup proxy.
But when tihis is only software Raid 5 ether on intel /AMD / ARM this would not be able to do this tranbsfer rates...

[CTICT]

Perhaps a bit late to be useful but I wouldn't use a Qnap as iSCSI target or virtualization station for a Veeam backup repo. With an iSCSI target you still have to run the server on other hardware, be it bare metal or a VM. Virtualization station severely limits the CPU and RAM resources you can use unless you go for a really expensive unit. A simple x86 server would in both cases be the better option.

If you want to use a NAS as backup target consider using it as a datastore for a virtual backup repo either Windows (ReFS) or Linux (XFS). You'll have a far greater choice of NAS where connectivity and number of disks are more important than CPU or RAM which means you can go cheaper on the NAS side. All Veeam processing is done on the virtualization host where your repo runs. If, like me, your Linux experience is limited, it's easier to run a virtual Linux repo rater than a physical one. And more portable as well. One of the main disadvantages of ReFS (and XFS as well I think) is that you can't migrate data to another repo wihout losing the gains from block cloning. A VM can be moved to new hardware when needed.