Recommendation for Windows Repository

[karlochacon]

hi guys

I've try to find in google something but nothing

I need to create some repositories between 15 TB to 20 TB, using Windows 2012 R2 (virtual VM) and Vmware 6.0
I am not sure If it's OK create a single 15TB VMDK in this Windows Server as a new unit R: and send all backups there
or
I should create multiple VMDKs like 2 TB each select a different controller for each disk and after that join all those disk creating an scable-out repository?

or what about storage space?

something else I am not sure what is affected when backups are executed is the internal LAN? I mean bandwidth between Virtual Veeam and the Vmware hosts is consumed?

any recommendation how to work disk?

thanks a lot guys

[DGrinev]

Hi Carlos,

I'd recommend you to create a single repository, that allows you to avoid situations described by my colleague Tom:

Take the simplest example, I have 4 LUNs of 30TB each, that's 120TB of space. To keep the example simple, let's assume I backup 20 VMs that require 4TB each for the VBKs, and they are perfectly balanced, so we have 20TB used on each extent and 10TB free. Great, right? Except that VMs on extent 1 have a higher change rate so they add 500GB/day, while the ones on extent 2-4 add only 100GB/day. By the 15th day extent 1 has 27TB used, and only 3TB free, well on it's way to being full, and not enough space to hold a full backup anymore. On the other hand, extents 2-4 still have ~8.5TB free, still a little tight, but if you need to run a full of any VM it will have to go to one extents 2-4, because extent 1 no longer has enough space. Note that this means you can run, at most, 3 extra full backups before every extent will be too full to hold any more.
Now imagine the same scenario with a single, 120TB repo. The first fulls use 80TB and you have 40TB free, after 15 days you still have nearly 30TB free. No worry about any single extent running out of space and no issue if you need to run even a few full backups.

I mean bandwidth between Virtual Veeam and the Vmware hosts is consumed?

It depends on the transport mode you are using for backups, also if you've the backup proxy deployed on a separate VM it will handle all the transport communications with the host.
Please review this thread for additional information - Don't Store Backups on VMFS...But why not? Thanks!

[karlochacon]

thanks a lot DGrinev