CIFS or iSCSI?

[logitech]

Hi,

I am currently evaluating Veeam and have it set up as follows:

- Windows 2012 server (vmware vSphere VM) in HQ running Veeam (running WAN accelerator and proxy)
- This is backing up 9 VM servers to CIFS share on a Synology 814+ configured with RAID 5.
- I'm then backup copying offsite over WAN to a CIFS share on a synology Diskstation 112 (over VPN)
- The offsite location has a physical win server 2012 which is running WAN accelerator and proxy

My question is, would I be better off configuring either or both NAS as iSCSI targets rather than CIFS?

Both the Synology NAS allows me to set them up as iSCSI targets, and I can then set them up to appear as local drives on the WIN2012 servers.

Will there be any benefit in doing this over using CIFS? (I'm mostly concerned about the backup copy performance over the 10mbps WAN).

If there is a benefit to iSCSI, should I configure both the HQ and Offsite NAS for iSCSI or just one of them?

Thanks in advance.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Jonathan,

Yes, using iSCSI protocol is a recommended way of exposing your target storage to the backup job/backup server. It should allow you to have better performance rates during synthetic full backup creation, data movers will be deployed on the Windows servers you mount these NAS boxes to. In your case target NAS will be mounted to physical win server 2012.

Also according to the statistics on these forums, CIFS is less reliable and sometimes can cause issues for the backup job.

Thanks!

[jmilic]

Setting up Version 8.. Can't really find any true answers..

In setting up a Repository, between a Windows Server with Local or ISCI storage, or a CIFS share.

I would assume that Windows with ISCI would be the best choice as it would give the best performance... Are there any other considerations / benifits for using a CIFS share?

[Shestakov]

Hello Ivan and welcome to the forum.
Please read the post above and ask additional questions if you have any. Thanks.

[jmilic]

Thanks, if CIFS doesn't give any other advantages, then I guess performance is the way to go.