SAN vs. NAS

[faco1989]

hi,
i want to know why using SAN and not NAS in veeam V7?
thx

[Vitaliy S.]

Can you please elaborate what do you mean by "why using SAN and not NAS"?

[faco1989]

I read everywhere that we should use the SAN rather than the NAS, so I wanted to know why we might to use it?

[Vitaliy S.]

Can you please tell me in what use cases it is written to use SAN and not a NAS device? SAN is generally referred to source storage, storage where you store your production VMs. As to NAS usage, then it is commonly used as destination target for the backup/backup copy jobs.

[faco1989]

I would like to set up a remote backup topology and in this case use a nas to make a backup of my Vm then send my snapshot on a off site...
Do you understand me?

[veremin]

Unfortunately, it’s still not clear what you’re trying to achieve. You’re going to use NAS device as a primary backup repository and, then, copy the corresponding backup data offsite, right?

Thanks.

[faco1989]

yes it s so i want to know if it's possible to use just NAS and not SAN in this case?

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, you can do that. Moreover, you can use any type of storage to store your backups.

[faco1989]

ok but i don t understand why the documentation in Veeam tell to use a SAN and not a NAS then?

[veremin]

As to the scenario in general, you can use local backup job that will write backup data to the said NAS device, and, then, specify this job as a source for backup copy job that will copy resulting backup files offsite.

Thanks.

[veremin]

ok but i don t understand why the documentation in Veeam tell to use a SAN and not a NAS

Can you point us to the documentation you're referring to? Thanks.

[faco1989]

i found this here:http://www.veeam.com/vm-backup-features.html

Thx for your advices

[foggy]

Most likely you're referring to direct SAN access transport mode used to retrieve source VM data directly from production storage over SAN fabric. This has nothing to do with the target storage, where you're going to place backup files. Is this where the confusion comes from?

[faco1989]

i think it can solve my problem yeah thx a lot for your help so

[veremin]

Feel free to ask for further clarification, should need be. Thanks.

[tsands]

I just moved a client to the Thecus N8850 Top Tower. We were attempting to do GFS backup copies but the lower end NAS we had prior to the Thecus couldn't handle the IO. I used the NAS charts and filtered by backup at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/rankers/ ... g/?rank=86 to make the decision. Also when choosing a device to store your backups on, you want to keep in mind how quickly you want to be able to recover your data. I've been doubling back on total size of VM's and calculating the transfer (read) rates to get an idea of how long it would take to recover specific VMs based on the speed of the NAS, accounting for the total IO of the drives minus the RAID overhead.

[Gostev]

When it comes to IOPS, it's all about the number of spindles... all other things do not matter that much. 8-bay NAS will always beat 6-bay NAS, and will always be beaten by 10-bay NAS despite of their rank on any comparison.