repository recommendation

[rasmusan]

Hello

I would like to hear from you guys, some recommendations on repository for the below use case

- Hyper-V server 2016 environment
- ~500 VMs to be backed up
- ~100TB production VM data
- ~45TB SQL data from physical SQL FCI cluster (using VAW or SQL native)
- ~5 TB daily change rate total
- retention time on backup repository around 15-30 days
- Forward incremental forever
- capable of doing instant VM Recovery for ~50 VMs simultaneously

I am thinking Cisco S3260 as one option with Windows Server 2016 and ReFS

Any thought and ideas are welcome

[JHuston]

What is your budget? The Cisco storage servers are neat, albeit spendy.

What are your plans for the 3-2-1 rule?

Read the ReFS forum, still has lost of issues. I wouldn't run it in my environment as I like things to just work and backups are something to be rock stable.

[rasmusan]

Performance over price for now - just need some advices

As for 3-2-1 there Will of course be some offsite storage as well, however we have a solution for that - so for the purpose of this thread, only primary repository is concerned

And as for ReFS, yes I also have my concerns around this - maybe just not worth it yet until proven stable...

[JHuston]

Great, glad you have the rest covered. If no appliance or any other 3rd party replication in the mix, the S3260 would be a great option. I run a mix of HP servers with DAS shelves and old SAN's for my repositories.

We are nearing a refresh cycle and like you I will more than likely be going with a few storage servers. The Super Micro Superstor servers offer large internal storage servers like the S3260 at a fraction of the cost. They aren't as flashy as the Cisco servers though. I can tell you that I have run both Cisco UCS and rack mount Cisco servers with no issues. I am however not a fan of how you update them, HP's and Dell's are easier to manage...

[rasmusan]

anyone have recommendations besides the above ??

[adrenaline_x]

what did you end up going with?

[rasmusan]

we ended up going with 2x HPE Apollo 4510 Gen10 servers (customer wanted HPE), filled with 6TB disks and RAID-60 with ReFS. Windows Server 2019, 256GB RAM, dual 12 core CPU, dual 10Gbe nic etc.... performs very well and have not encountered any issues with ReFS... lots of issues with HPE hardware though do to a manufacturing issue on new Gen10 Apollo's disk backplane, but HPE seems to have fixed this now