Recommendations for backup storage, backup target

[foggy]

You can find some recommendations regarding backup storage in this thread. Thanks.

[avelinop01]

Thank you. I was looking for exact feedback on the Synology units I was looking at.

[foggy]

Probably others who had the ability to use these models will chime in, my main point was to pay your attention at other possible options as well.

[avelinop01]

of course. Thank you.

[ITP-Stan]

https://www.synology.com/en-us/products ... ce#xs_plus

The XS+ is faster, but is it worth the price difference, I can't tell.

You're probably only going to do ISCSI to the box from a mount/proxy/backup server.

[Mildur]

We are looking into acquiring "NetApp FAS with NL SAS" for primary (or better secondary) iSCSI Backup target. Is this a good choice?
I know, technically it will work. But what about the performance? Backup and restore times?
What are the impacts with "refs filesystem in the iscsi volume on windows site" and "deduplication on netapp site"?

Thank you very much, if someone has any experience with this scenario.

[btmaus]

Anybody using Dell R730XD servers with lots of disk as a target repository? Looking to move my daily backups to something like this, as the Dell DR series dedupe appliance isn't coping. The DR works well for the longer term GFS backups, but the daily backups need to be moved to something faster. Keen to hear from people using the R730XD, and what configuration you have?

[ITP-Stan]

I would definitely do primary backup to something fast, so no dedup appliance or windows dedup. Direct attached storage with a bunch of disks is definitely a good option, speed-wise. A SAN with decent throughput will do fine as well.
For GFS secondary backup dedup makes sense, or just use ReFS 64k without dedup.

[JaySt]

Anybody using Dell R730XD servers with lots of disk as a target repository? Looking to move my daily backups to something like this, as the Dell DR series dedupe appliance isn't coping. The DR works well for the longer term GFS backups, but the daily backups need to be moved to something faster. Keen to hear from people using the R730XD, and what configuration you have?

Great machines ! Used them a couple of times for dedicated repository servers and all-in-one appliance-like deployments running Windows server 2016. We have very good performance using perc h730 and 12 disk RAID6 disk setups, dual 8 core xeons and 64GB+ memory. Additionally two SSD disks in the flexbays in the back for boot and vpower cache . 600MB - 1GB/s sequential throughput easily. 10gbit ethernet mostly, some have direct SAN connetions using FC or iSCSI

You could go with storage spaces as well instead of perc raid for additional data integrity checks/healing but its a decision based on management complexity, knowledge etc. if you want simple management, just raid6 gives great results. Preconfiguring a perc H830 adapter for external disk enclosures (MD) is also convenient to quickly/easy adding of capacity if needed in the future

I do have to say all of them protect less than 15TB data currently and less than 75 VMs. So i cannot say i've really stressed them out though i feel they can take quite some additional load.

Im still waiting to deploy multiple 730xd's in a SOBR setup.

I'd reccomend them

[btmaus]

@JaySt

Thanks for the info. The 12 disk RAID6 setup you have, is that NL SAS drives? I'm looking at 8TB NL SAS drives in RAID6 to give me the capacity, just worried the performance might be that great?

[PaulNSW]

Currently running a 730xd with ReFS Storage Spaces on 2016. So far so good...
Due to a bit of confusion during the order process, we've ended up with a bit of a mix of parts, but it's been running smoothly.
Dell HBA330 mini (integrated) to control all the Storage Spaces disks in mirror config (12x 6TB Seagate ST6000NM0095 SAS)
Dell Perc H300 (pcie) controlling the two disks in the Flexbays

Just using a 4 port 1GB NIC, 1 to mgmt, 2 to iSCSI (direct-san to Equallogic that stores all VMs), 1 to QNAP for off-site

Protecting around 30 VMs and a total of 25TB of data

[JaySt]

@JaySt

Thanks for the info. The 12 disk RAID6 setup you have, is that NL SAS drives? I'm looking at 8TB NL SAS drives in RAID6 to give me the capacity, just worried the performance might be that great?

Yes i use NLSAS drives. Performance is great. I get >1GB/s sequential throughput on the local machine easily. So network is bottlneck for full backups. i use ReFS blockclone during synthetic fulls, so no real performance needed for that either. i also have some machines running NTFS for the repo and it's running just fine, hundreds of MBs/s throughput.

But it depends on what you will send to the repository, backup methods, transfer modes etc etc.

[knalbone]

Currently running a 730xd with ReFS Storage Spaces on 2016. So far so good...
Due to a bit of confusion during the order process, we've ended up with a bit of a mix of parts, but it's been running smoothly.
Dell HBA330 mini (integrated) to control all the Storage Spaces disks in mirror config (12x 6TB Seagate ST6000NM0095 SAS)
Dell Perc H300 (pcie) controlling the two disks in the Flexbays

Just using a 4 port 1GB NIC, 1 to mgmt, 2 to iSCSI (direct-san to Equallogic that stores all VMs), 1 to QNAP for off-site

Protecting around 30 VMs and a total of 25TB of data

Looking to size something similar myself. I was wondering what your retention looks like. We want nightly incremental backups with weekly synthetic full on 7TB of data. 30 days worth of restore points. The sizing tool at http://rps.dewin.me/ tells me we'll need > 56TB. Excluding space savings from ReFS I wonder if that sounds accurate.

[PaulNSW]

We have 31 days retention and weekly synthetic fulls. Out of 32TB of usable space, we have 5.5TB free at the moment. It's a little messed up right now, as fastclone wasn't working for a while, and because we're using forward incremental, the actual restore points are around 45 per VM.

[gazfocus]

I hope you can all help.

Our current setup is a cheap Dell server running Windows Server 2016 Essentials, which is backing up (using the built in software) to another hard drive in the server.

However, I am in the process of upgrading our network, and have just bought a new server and will be running hyper-v and 2 x Windows Server 2016 Std vm's, and I want to put a proper backup system in place.

We are going to be using Veeam Backup & Replication, and my original intention was to buy a Synology RS816 Rackmount NAS, but I've just been reading about using older servers stuffed full with disks, so I'm just wondering what the better option is. We don't have an old server that would be sufficient, so I'd have to buy one, which would cost about £100-150 less than the cost of the Synology, but just wondering which would genuinely be the best option.

In my mind, the Synology is simple to use, and can sync to cloud storage for extra redundancy, whereas I wouldn't really know where to start with using a server as a backup target.

[DGrinev]

Hi Gareth and welcome to the community!

You can find recommendations in this thread regarding backup storage.
Also, you can review existing discussion about Synology with VBR 9.5. Thanks

[ITP-Stan]

Forget about syncing Veam backup files in the cloud with Synology cloud features. Unless your data is very small and your upload speed is huge, it won't work good.
The Synology NAS devices, are really good devices with a very nice and easy interface, but when you put your backup files on there (using iSCSI or CIFS) you will only use it as a means of storage and you need to appoint a server (or the B&R server itself) as the Data Mover.

A server (not antique) with a decent RAID controller and a bunch of disks in RAID 5 will out perform a Synology RS816 for sure. You just have to configure the RAID, partition for OS and backup storage and install Windows. That's it. In Veeam B&R console you just add the created server as a backup repository.

So my 2 cents, Synology devices are great for storing your backups, but an old(er) server (not antique) will have more performance, and you can use that server as Data Mover and perhaps as Proxy in Network backup mode.

[jamerson]

Dear All,
We are willing to buy a NAS in order to have our backups of the VMwares to,
i would like to know your experience with NAS if they works fine with VEEAM .
We advies our Customer to buy the ENT licenties of VEEAM which is already purchased.
Thank you for your advise.

[westcamp]

First, thanks in advance for advice on this. I work at a small business but we are going to be backing up ~130-150 workstations and servers using Veeam. Mostly standalone, but some Hyper-V as well. Overall, I've budgeted ~200TB of raw data for this project based on RAID 10 and forecasting out over the next 5 years or so of growth.

I'm looking at 3 different hardware options and wanted to get some suggestions or feedback on what I should go with.

Option 1: NAS Solution
I'd have to dig a little deeper as to which brand to go with, but whether Synology, ReadyNAS, QNAP, etc. basically a Linux based on-board NAS with 200+TB of on-board raw storage.

Option 2: All-in-One solution running Windows 2016. (Supermicro 5049P-E1CR45L 4U)
This option puts a full server and 45 + 2 drive bays all together to supply me with more than enough storage (40x6TB drives RAID 10,2x1TB SSD RAID1 for OS) running Win Server 2016. The inside hardware I'm looking at would be a Xeon Gold 6126, 128GB RAM, and a Supermicro AOM-S3008M-L8-P SAS 3.0 12Gb/s 8-port Host Bus Adapter. My only concern with Supermicro's solution is, I can't tell if it's on a hardware or software RAID controller. This device is Veeam repository ready per Veeam's website.

Option 3: Two separate devices using a server and a JBOD. (Dell R430 and SDJ-846BEC-JBOD 4U 24-bay SAS 12G JBOD)
The final option I'm looking at has a full server and a separate JBOD that will directly connect with each other running Win Server 2016 to store the backup data on-site. This would use 24x10TB drives on the JBOD, with the server using 2 x Xeon E5 2620's, 128GB RAM, using a LSI SAS 9300-8e 8-port external SAS3 HBA connecting to a Broadcom MegaRAID 9380-8e 8-port external SAS3 RAID Controller card.


From what I've read in the forums previously, Option 1 is probably not my most ideal solution. The downside to being a SMB is I'm on a limited but fair IT budget for this project, meaning I should have a sufficient budget to do this using any of the methods above, but I don't have enough to screw it up and go back to ask for more, so I'm really looking forward to your opinions and advice on what solution would be best.

[PTide]

Hi and welcome aboard : )

First of all, it's not quite clear whether you're asking for recommendations on storage (as it might seem from your option-1), or on all Veeam components placement (implied by the "All-in-One" in option-2), or both (option-3). would you clarify that a little bit, please? Until then it is hard to tell for sure what'd be the best for you, but I would suggest to use two separate servers - one acting as a primary repository, and another one serving as a secondary backup repository to keep copies of your backups.
That is, keeping all backups one one server is not really a good thing - imagine if one day it decides to give up the ghost...

Also please check this best practices guide for some insights.

Thanks!

[westcamp]

Thanks for the quick reply. So right now, I have Veeam running on my Hyper-V server, and backing up to an additional storage drive on our Primary Domain Controller. I'm wanting to get that off of our Primary Domain Controller and onto something that is more standalone and add-on the rest of our computers as physical backups.

So this is for the primary backup, which is phase 1 of implementation. After this is done, phase 2 will be figuring out whether to do a second storage repository or managed cloud repository based with some/all of our systems depending on how critical they are.

[PTide]

I've merged your post into the existing discussion on the subject, please take a look.

Regarding this:

My only concern with Supermicro's solution is, I can't tell if it's on a hardware or software RAID controller. This device is Veeam repository ready per Veeam's website.

As far as I can see from their specification, it's SW.

Thanks

[nmdange]

Option 2: All-in-One solution running Windows 2016. (Supermicro 5049P-E1CR45L 4U)
This option puts a full server and 45 + 2 drive bays all together to supply me with more than enough storage (40x6TB drives RAID 10,2x1TB SSD RAID1 for OS) running Win Server 2016. The inside hardware I'm looking at would be a Xeon Gold 6126, 128GB RAM, and a Supermicro AOM-S3008M-L8-P SAS 3.0 12Gb/s 8-port Host Bus Adapter. My only concern with Supermicro's solution is, I can't tell if it's on a hardware or software RAID controller. This device is Veeam repository ready per Veeam's website.

You want the E1CR45H, not the E1CR45L, which comes with a Broadcom 3108 hardware RAID controller (so no HBA required). Our current backup repository is a SuperStorage 6049P-E1CR36H + SC847E1C-R1K28JBOD. I prefer that option since you avoid the top-loading drive bays. If you plan on using ReFS I would suggest doing 256GB of RAM. Also, I find RAID 60 a good alternative to RAID 10 for better space efficiency, and I've never had a performance issue with our system.

[m.novelli]

Dell is releasing a PowerEdge R740XD2 that offer 24 3,5'' bays in a 2U chassis

Cheers, ciao

[westcamp]

Thank you both for the information! I'm revising option 2 to the model you listed with 256GB RAM. And it's good to know Dell is coming out with a similar type of option.

Thank you!

[JayP]

Hi. I am building a new backup server for Veeam B&R. Currently using an old Dell PE with 20TB of internal SATA storage.

New build will have 2x 8c Intel CPU's with HT, 192Gb RAM 2x Enterprise SSD's for OS but need some advice on the additional backup storage.

Currently its a toss up between going for internal 12x 4TB NL SAS using the internal H710
or
Dell MD1200 also utilising 12x 4TB NL SAS running on an additional H800/810.

Pros and Cons would be massively appreciated. Thank you kind people!

Kind regards

[JaySt]

Internal is easier, saves rackspace and maintenance.
Looking at the raid controllers, those are not current models. What host model are you using?
also, if you're planning to use Windows Server 2016/2019 with ReFS, you could consider less disks but with higher capacity in case 12 x 8TB is not possible within budget. You could go 6 or 7 disks of 8TB for example. That way, you can easily expand with single disks internally later, something you cannot do with 12 x 4TB, except for adding the MD1200. ReFS does alot of the heavy lifting these days and makes it less of a requirement for higher disk counts for performance.

[JayP]

Thank you for the input JaySt. Appreciate it.

I went for the external MD1200 in the end. It is a noisy beast but offers me flexibility in the case that it ever needs moving to another host. In hindsight though internal would have been quieter, use less power and take up less space in the rack. Cheers

[pkelly_sts]

I know Veeam are a big fan of JBOD as first-line storage (as am I) with de-dupe appliances more suited to secondary storage.

I'm making a case for JBOD (as opposed to JUST Quantum DXi de-dupe), & trying to push for SSD-based JBOD as well if budget allows, but how would folks here configure a HPe DL380 server with 24 x SSD disks?
Would you configure a couple of 12-disk RAID arrays (I'd be happy with RAID-6 as SSD should negate any performance costs) or literally JBOD with something like Windows Storage tech (Storage spaces?) which I haven't personally played with much as yet.

Based on what I've read recently about reading from ReFS to tape potentially being performance-impacted I don't think I'd go down this route (seems to me going 1st-backup copied to tape would be better than 2nd copy copied to tape - assuming using Quantum DXi & Quantum Scalar hardware.

[pkelly_sts]

Hmm, I should have searched the forums before posting, plenty of discussions on the subject, fishing through them now, couldn't find a way to delete my post though...