Landing Site between backup proxy and Data Domain ?

[matai]

I have a spare Dell R720 server that I'd like to re-purpose to act as a "landing site" for backups between my backup proxy and a Data Domain 640. I just have a few questions:

1. I'm going to add as much storage as possible and install Windows Server 2012R2. How should I configure the storage repository on Windows to work best with Veeam? Also, are SSD's recommended if possible?

2. I'm thinking I'll be doing reverse incremental to the R720 and forward incremental to the Data Domain, does that sound right?

3. The source is a Nutanix cluster on 10GbE fiber, would you think adding 10GbE cards to the R720 and Data Domain be worth it?

Thanks!

[foggy]

1. I'm going to add as much storage as possible and install Windows Server 2012R2. How should I configure the storage repository on Windows to work best with Veeam? Also, are SSD's recommended if possible?

Please review the following thread discussing recommended RAID configurations. SSD's are not generally required in this case, however not prohibited.

2. I'm thinking I'll be doing reverse incremental to the R720 and forward incremental to the Data Domain, does that sound right?

If you're going to use backup copy jobs to copy backups from the landing server to the DataDomain storage, then there's no backup mode choice for them, they are always incremental.

3. The source is a Nutanix cluster on 10GbE fiber, would you think adding 10GbE cards to the R720 and Data Domain be worth it?

You can set up both backup and backup copy jobs and check the bottleneck stats they will generate. In case network is the bottleneck on either hop, you can think of upgrading corresponding network equipment.

[matai]

Thanks for the great info!

So I'm thinking for our landing site, I have a Dell R720 w/ 32Gb RAM that I could add six-6Tb HDD's in RAID 10 which would give me 18Tb. Currently it has 4 1Gb NICs bonded, I could add a 10GbE SFP+ card to it.

Is there an appliance that I could buy that would give me similar or better performance?

I have some re-sellers trying get me to buy Barracuda or Quantum devices, but I'm not familiar with them and am hoping to get some opinions here.

Thanks!