4TB (3Gbps) vs 3TB (6Gbps)

[paallergy]

Goal: storage for VEB backups

I have an ESXi host (HP Proliant 380G7) that is currently just used for compute purposes; the 6 drive bays are empty. I would like to add 6 drives (RAID 6) and create a datastore. I plan on putting a VM on the datastore with a large virtual hard drive, and making the storage available as an SMB share for VEB backups. The datastore may also be used for low priority, low I/O VMs and storage (not just VEB backups).

My thought is that the network (1 Gbps) will be the bottleneck for the VEB backups, so there is no benefit in using 6 Gbps drives.

Is my reasoning correct with respect to the VEB backups (with a 1 Gbps network, 6 Gbps drives won't be any faster than 3 Gbps drives)?

Should I use RAID 10 instead of RAID 6 to compensate somewhat for the slower drives, since the datastore may be running 3 or 4 VMs?

HP 3TB 6G SAS 7.2K rpm LFF (3.5-inch) Midline
HP 4TB 3G SATA 7.2k rpm LFF (3.5-inch) Midline

Thank you for your input

[PTide]

Hi,

My thought is that the network (1 Gbps) will be the bottleneck for the VEB backups, so there is no benefit in using 6 Gbps drives. Is my reasoning correct with respect to the VEB backups (with a 1 Gbps network, 6 Gbps drives won't be any faster than 3 Gbps drives)?

Correct, network will be the bottleneck.

Should I use RAID 10 instead of RAID 6 to compensate somewhat for the slower drives

There is an existing thread on that topic, please take a look and, if any questions persist, feel free to ask.

, since the datastore may be running 3 or 4 VMs?

I would not recommend that. At least make sure that your backups go to other arrays than your VMs may be running on. Otherwise the performance of backups will woefull, especially during transforms. If you're planning to access the virtual drive via the same 1Gbit then it'd better to have a dedicated server for backups.

Thank you.