Using a Synology NAS as a Backup Target

[MoifMurphy]

Hi,

We're taking a look at Veeam 7 with a view to replacing Backup Exec. We have a Synology RS3412xs loaded up with a few TB and we'd like to use it as a backup target. Are there any guides or best practices, caveats or anything we can take a look at? Is NFS or iSCSI the better option etc etc.

We'll be using forward incremental backups (possibly archiving to tape eventually) and initially the NAS will be stored locally with a view to WAN later on. We're on 10GboE network as well.

Thanks

[foggy]

iSCSI is generally preferable. You can search for other users experience with similar devices.

[cava83]

Hi,

We're taking a look at Veeam 7 with a view to replacing Backup Exec. We have a Synology RS3412xs loaded up with a few TB and we'd like to use it as a backup target. Are there any guides or best practices, caveats or anything we can take a look at? Is NFS or iSCSI the better option etc etc.

We'll be using forward incremental backups (possibly archiving to tape eventually) and initially the NAS will be stored locally with a view to WAN later on. We're on 10GboE network as well.

Thanks

How are you getting on?

We are looking at doing the same, however without tapes.

Just wondering if and how you set it up and implemented your setup.

Any info, really appreciate it.

Many thanks,

G.

[mmonroe]

A couple of months ago I implemented a Synology DS2413+ filled up with 4tb drives in a RAID-6 giving just under 37tb usable space. I added this unit specifically for doing backup copy jobs with version 7 Veeam. I wanted to be able to keep a truck load of daily incrementals along with the weekly, monthly stuff, etc.

I experimented with both ISCSI and CIFS shares. I tinkered with both for a few days to ballpark speed and whatnot. The unit is mainly bottlenecked by the network connection and Veeam running the backup copy jobs in a serial fashion (versus parallel) and not the drives, the RAID or whatnot. Over a few days and 2-3tb, I found the performance to be fairly close between ISCSI and CIFS shares. I have about 7tb on the unit now and so far things are fine and the speed remains good. Once I get a lot of data on it - say perhaps 10-15tg, I may double check the speeds between ISCSI and CIFS shares.

For the time being, I have gone with CIFS shares over ISCSI for several reasons. You cant "map" ISCSI shares to other machines. With CIFS shares, I can map things to my PC and take a look at the backups and I can copy them around and whatnot. It is just easier to "peek in" on things with CIFS shares.

With CIFS shares, when you delete things the space is immediately reclaimed with the NAS. With ISCSI, even when thin provisioned, the space will not shrink when you delete stuff from the LUN. A whole separate process has to be run with SDELETE and UNMAP to get the space back. Since our NAS has so much space, I use it as a utility area for all kinds of stuff and decided I didnt want to tie up space on it with ISCSI Luns unless I really need to. If you map a bunch of ISCSI luns and start copying things around you will tie up a bunch of space fast even if they are thinly provisioned and that space is a headache to reclaim.

Anyway... After two months of using the DS2413+, I am pretty happy with it. Even in RAID-6 the speed seems to be limited to the network connection. I do wish that the Veeam backup copy jobs would run in parallel versus serial. I think this would speed things up more than anything.