Backup Solution Assistance

[tgordon03]

We are currently using tape backups, and are looking to move to a disk to disk solution. We already have Veeam Backup and Replication Enterprise Edition, however currently we are only using it for replication. Can anybody recommend any cost efficient storage solutions that will meet our needs given the backup size, retention policy, and offsite requirements outlined below? I will also include a few options that we are looking at as well.

Backup and Offsite Requirements
- Backing up 6.7 TB of total data
- Expected growth estimate of 1.5 TB per year
- 2 copies of each backup are required. 1 will be onsite, and the other offsite at our DR location.
- We currently have a 50 meg pipe to our DR location. We were considering upgrading the pipe and/or upgrading Veeam to Enterprise Plus to utilize WAN acceleration. We need to be sure our backups can finish within about 12 hours.
- We were planning on seeding the initial backup, and doing synthetic fulls moving forward.

Retention policy
- Daily 14 Days
- Weekly 4 weeks
- Monthly 6 months
- Yearly 10 years

Solution 1 (x2)
- HP DL380 Server
- 21 TB Usable space
- HPE StoreOnce Virtual Appliance for de-dupe (10 or 50TB license)

Solution 2 (x2)
- HP StoreOnce 3520 Physical Appliance for de-dupe
- 12 TB Usable space with upgrade license to upgrade to 24 TB

Solution 3 (x2)
- QNAP TS-EC1280U-R2
- 44 TB Usable space
- Will utilize Veeam de-dupe, however it will not de-dupe as much as the other solutions as de-dupe will only be applied per backup set.


Thanks in advance to anybody who can provide feedback.

- Tom

[Andreas Neufert]

So you need a primary chain (14 days) + BCJ chain (14+4+6+10)

You need round about
9TB (14 days) on your primary backup site
http://rps.dewin.me/?m=1&s=6700&r=14&c= ... y=1&dg=1&e

and
43TB (14+4+6+10) on your secondary offsite
http://rps.dewin.me/?m=3&s=6700&r=14&c= ... 4,6,0,10&e

or 2x 52TB

With actual Version v9, and as you are a HPE shop, Usage of an HP Apollo (everything in one box) or DL380 with disk expansion would fit your need in case of performance and sizing.
As most of the data will be added over time, you can start with a smaller configuration and add capacity or an additional server with discspace over time.
Use Standard Settings for Veeam Dedup and compression.

This would allow later to use it with Win2016 ReFS Block Cloning and Veeam v9.5 which will reduce IO for Merge Processes dramatically but as well it uses the block cloning technology to reduce the Backup Copy Job GFS chains.


Maybe 2x (one for primary and one for secondary) HPE Apollo (or DL380) with ~25TB capacity and you need additional capacity (or Server) in 3-5 years?

When you go with this.... Use good Battery backed Raid controllers, add 2 SSDs and enable smart cache. Use Raid60 with 6+2 configuration.

Dedup Appliances will reduce performance and complexity dramatically and they are not needed at this data amount.
Maybe an option would be to use another server vendor as secondary with similar setup, just for safety. (A mistake or bug would not hit both).

[foggy]

Dedicated thread with backup target recommendations for your review.

[tgordon03]

I just wanted to clarify that our requirement to keep two copies of all backups is for redundancy, not for easy restores. If something were to happen to the offsite backup and it is the only copy that contains all of the monthly and yearly backups then we would be in trouble as we would be failing to keep to our promised data retention policies with our clients. That's why I had (x2) listed on all of the options we put in.

[Andreas Neufert]

Jup then it´s the 2x 52TB option I described. AS you need most of the capacity over time, it is maybe an option to buy later more storage.
Anyway 2x an Apollo or DL380 with the configuration mentioned above + Win2016 ReFS with enabled file integrity to detect bit rod at the storage would beat any dedup storage in case of performance and price.