REFS on NFS Share

[camper8080]

Hi.

I want to use the fast clone feature for Synthetic Fulls.

Using a Synology RS3617RPxs/DSM 6.2 [RAID6/BTRFS] as a backup target, mapping an NFS 4.1 share [multipath] to a VMware cluster, created/attached virtual disk to a Windows Server 2016 Veeam server running 9.5.0.1922, formatted disk [25TB/can be expanded] as REFS w/64K blocks.

Is this considered a sane option or should I just NTFS?

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you!

[Mike Resseler]

Hey camper8080,

First: welcome to the forums!

I can't comment on the setup on the VMware level, there are others who know that better . From a Microsoft perspective, since you created a virtual disk (I assume it is supported your method) and formatted it with ReFS. So from that point of view there is no issue.

[tdewin]

Doesn't the Synology offer iSCSI support? In that case, you could map it directly to the VM. If ever your vsphere hosts crashes, you can mount the iSCSI LUN to another Windows VM or physical server bypassing the ESXi stack. Just a thought

[camper8080]

Thanks for the feedback.

I did consider mapping an iSCSI LUN directly to the VM. Customer is using a Nimble iSCSI SAN and on a storage VLAN, which NFS is running over right now. I'd have to create a VM network to the iSCSI vswitch or just run iSCSI over their production network - I believe it's not recommended to mix production/iSCSI traffic. I do like the option of mapping the iSCSI LUN to another server if the VM/hosts go offline.

I'm pinging the forum to see if anyone else is running a similar configuration. This all started when I created a repository and Veeam said it didn't have 64K/REFS/no fast clone available. If i didn't see this, I'd never know about fast clone.