Linux Repo HW Specs - SMB

[dhayes16]

Hello All.
So we are loving the Linux Hardened Repo. We have deployed this at medium and large scale customers and it works perfectly. Now we want to offer a solution to some of our smaller SMB customers who do not have giant budgets to build out a backup infrastructure. But we do not want to use NAS devices since this is not recommended by Veeam. And rotating drives are out due to the lack of support for the SOBR to push to object storage. So we would like to come up with a lower end Linux Hardened Repo as the on-prem target to then be pushed to Wasabi or AWS via the SOBR. But we want to make sure we follow best practices here to avoid issues seen on NAS devices. We know refurb server class devices are available but we would like to come up with something standard here since there are a lot of SMB customers we would like to pitch this to. So I was thinking of a desktop class I5 system with 16GB RAM and (2) 4TB drives (or more depending on customer). And I know hardware raid is recommended but is that still the case with the Linux repo? I know it would be ideal for hardware raid but we would need to find hardware raid that works with desktop class systems. Linux software RAID seems to work quite well but we do not want to deviate from best practice.

We do not want this to seem like we are "cheaping" out but some of the other backup solutions out there have a lower cost of entry due to lower cost on premise build outs. These SMBS are smaller with under 1TB to backup with possibly 1-3 VM's at the most.

Thanks for any input.!

[Hindawi]

Hi dhayes16,

But we do not want to use NAS devices since this is not recommended by Veeam.

I am not sure about that

I suggest to use NAS device, when using a SMB share as target please check the following points:

• SMB 3.x.x must be fully supported by the storage vendor or Windows Server (recommended Windows Server 2016+).

• To improve performance and reduce the latency impact, use one of the RDMA features Windows Server provides with SMB direct (RoCE or iWarp).

• For 1 to 3 VMs use a 10 Gibt/s network interface.

Reference: https://bp.veeam.com/vbr/3_Build_struct ... s/nas.html

Best Regards,
Moustafa Hindawi

[grantemsley]

From my own experience, what you're describing sounds reasonable. You can probably go even cheaper if you wanted to.

My linux repos are running on decomissioned QNAP NASes I installed linux on (which I don't recommend doing, because of some BIOS issues, but the hardware specs are useful to compare). i5-4590S CPU, 16GB RAM, and linux software RAID6. We have about 4TB stored right now. Even at it's peak while doing backups, it never goes above 40% memory utilization, so even 8GB of RAM would have been fine. CPU utilization gets up to about 80% during backups, so I wouldn't go much lower on the processor - but even the mid range i3 10th and 11th generation CPUs wil be twice as fast as that old processor, so a modern i3 will be plenty.

For 2-4 disks you can just use onboard SATA and software RAID. I've had less issues with mdadm than hardware RAID controllers over the years, and it has the advantage that you can drop the drives in any linux system to read them in a disaster recovery situation. Performance has been perfectly fine for us even using RAID6. With 2 drives you'd be using RAID1 which will perform even better.

For the disks, especially if using RAID5, make sure they are CMR drives, not SMR drives. Even some "NAS" drives these days are SMR, and they do have horrible issues in RAID. SATA Enterprise Capacity drives aren't much more than consumer models, and have a much longer warranty and lower error rates, so that's what we are using.

[dhayes16]

Hi dhayes16,


I am not sure about that

I suggest to use NAS device, when using a SMB share as target please check the following points:

• SMB 3.x.x must be fully supported by the storage vendor or Windows Server (recommended Windows Server 2016+).

• To improve performance and reduce the latency impact, use one of the RDMA features Windows Server provides with SMB direct (RoCE or iWarp).

• For 1 to 3 VMs use a 10 Gibt/s network interface.

Reference: https://bp.veeam.com/vbr/3_Build_struct ... s/nas.html

Best Regards,
Moustafa Hindawi

Thanks...So I guess I need to dig deeper into their messaging on NAS devices. Everywhere I read Veeam people are saying the avoid NAS devices since a good chunk their support calls are from corruption resulting from using a NAS device with their own proprietary RAID. Perhaps they are referring to using low end consumer NAS devices like a lower end synology or Qnap. But if that is the case then what IS supported as far as NAS? But in reality a lower end computer with Linux loaded using XFS would be in the same price range as a NAS. I guess the question there is do we go hardware RAID or software raid.? As we roll these out we want to maintain Veeam best practices and do not want a corruption issue because we cheaped out on an unsupported NAS.

Thanks for the feedback

[dhayes16]

From my own experience, what you're describing sounds reasonable. You can probably go even cheaper if you wanted to.

My linux repos are running on decomissioned QNAP NASes I installed linux on (which I don't recommend doing, because of some BIOS issues, but the hardware specs are useful to compare). i5-4590S CPU, 16GB RAM, and linux software RAID6. We have about 4TB stored right now. Even at it's peak while doing backups, it never goes above 40% memory utilization, so even 8GB of RAM would have been fine. CPU utilization gets up to about 80% during backups, so I wouldn't go much lower on the processor - but even the mid range i3 10th and 11th generation CPUs wil be twice as fast as that old processor, so a modern i3 will be plenty.

For 2-4 disks you can just use onboard SATA and software RAID. I've had less issues with mdadm than hardware RAID controllers over the years, and it has the advantage that you can drop the drives in any linux system to read them in a disaster recovery situation. Performance has been perfectly fine for us even using RAID6. With 2 drives you'd be using RAID1 which will perform even better.

For the disks, especially if using RAID5, make sure they are CMR drives, not SMR drives. Even some "NAS" drives these days are SMR, and they do have horrible issues in RAID. SATA Enterprise Capacity drives aren't much more than consumer models, and have a much longer warranty and lower error rates, so that's what we are using.

Thanks for the information. I appreciate the details on the hardware utilization especially in regard to the CPU. Hardware RAID seems to be recommended but if we decide to go with a NON server class computer for these repos then the question is which RAID controller? It would seem like desktop systems with integrated SATA controllers would work well with Linux software RAID but I am not finding any info on this.

We have a bunch of SMB customers out there and we would love to offer them options.

Thanks again

[grantemsley]

Integrated SATA controllers on desktop class systems will work perfectly with linux software RAID.

If you want hardware RAID, you'd be looking for something like an LSI RAID card with SFF8087 to SATA breakout cables. But for servers that are only going to have a few drives, I'd just stick with the onboard SATA and software RAID.