SMB vs iSCSI for small business

[DVelez]

One very small customer wants to configure a Qnap NAS as a backup repository. There are three VM's with less than 1TB of storage. Is SMB good enough for this case, or should go ahead and configure iSCSI?

Thanks,
DV

[HannesK]

Hello,
SMB is bad in general, especially with these low end NAS systems (one of the main reasons customer are losing data because of poor SMB protocol implementation). With active full backups it should technically work.

iSCSI with NTFS would be better. iSCSI with REFS is likely unsupported because these boxes are usually not on the Windows Server Hardware compatibility list.

"Good enough" is probably the main point Probably it's "good enough" and if you have a second backup copy, then the risk of losing data would be close to zero.

Best regards,
Hannes

[DVelez]

Hello Hans,
And thanks for the response. I check the Windows HCL, and the Qnap model they have is certified. The customer does a monthly active backup and daily incremental to the NAS, and a copy to Wasabi using object storage. Do you think this is "good enough"? This customer is very small, and a high-end storage system is out of budget. What hardware or configuration would you suggest for these cases?

Also, I find interesting how Veeam includes SMB in the list of supported repositories. Why they support if, as you said, is so bad in general?

[HannesK]

Hello,
sounds "good enough", yes.

A server with internal disks is the general recommendation. Too big for your case probably.

Why they support if, as you said, is so bad in general?

because we have very (very very) many customers using it / want to use it

We support SMB in general. If the protocol is implemented properly, then it's fine. We cannot block systems with bad implementations of the protocol. But we put a recommendation in the wizard



Best regards,
Hannes

[DVelez]

Hello,
I'll check if there is a low-cost server that could work with Veeam for my small customers. Worst case, I'll use iSCSI with the Qnap / Synology appliances.

Thanks for your feedback!