Upgrading our Veeam backup server

Dashrender

@Carnival-Boy said:

@Dashrender said:

Also, what RAID is the ReadyNAS? RAID 10 or 5? Assuming RAID 10, and 8 TB is enough, you'll probably be fine, but remember you are reducing your IOPs, but for backup and restore, you probably don't care.

RAID10 I believe. Why wouldn't I care about IOPS? The HP 410 RAID controller may also be faster than whatever is used by the ReadyNAS. Speed is always important with backup and recovery - especially recovery.

You would care, but only up until it has enough IOPS then you wouldn't care further. Backups have a maximum potential write throughput, once you can accept it at full speed, you don't care that you could take more because there is no more to take (currently.)

Said so much better than I could.

scottalanmiller

@Dashrender said:

How would you connect the NAS directly to the server? USB? iSCSI?

NFS as NAS. If he hooked up with iSCSI, it would be a traditional DAS.

USB isn't an option with the gear he is looking at.

Carnival Boy

@Dashrender said:

How would you connect the NAS directly to the server?

Er, crossover cable. Is that right?

marcinozga

@Carnival-Boy said:

@Dashrender said:

How would you connect the NAS directly to the server?

Er, crossover cable. Is that right?

Why crossover? 1Gbit and faster doesn't require crossover anymore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium-dependent_interface#Auto_MDI-X

Carnival Boy

Oh, ok. I really have no idea. I was just getting info from here https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/198210-10gb-and-nas-direct-connect-or-need-a-switch

scottalanmiller

@Carnival-Boy said:

Oh, ok. I really have no idea. I was just getting info from here https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/198210-10gb-and-nas-direct-connect-or-need-a-switch

You can always do direct. Should be fine with straight cable. Nothing requires a switch, a switch is supposed to be invisible on the network.

wrx7m

My Veeam server is a VM and I use a Synology 1813+ with 8 4TB Seagate Constellation HDDs in OBR10 as a backup repository. With Veeam 9, you can create the scale-out backup repository that allows you to add several device types and combine them into a single repository. I would not run Veeam on a physical server.

wrx7m

Furthermore, with several (maybe most) Synology models you can expand/add storage via optional enclosures that would be completely transparent to the devices you are presenting the volumes to. So it would not even need the Veeam scale-out feature to allow you to increase storage capacity.

Carnival Boy

Is it ok to run Veeam server as a VM on the host that you want to backup, or should it always be on a separate host? Or can you install it on two hosts for redundancy? We only use local storage for VMs.

Is you repository part of a VM or just raw storage outside of any hypervisor?

Dashrender

You can install Veeam where ever you want. Just keep in mind that if you install it as a VM on your one and only VM host, when that host is down, so is your ability to restore any data, So this means that you need to have a plan on who you are going to gain access to your backups so you can restore them to another VM Host.

As for the backup data - @wrx7m did mention that he is backing up his data to a Synology 1813+ which he called a backup repository. While he didn't specifically say it, we can only hope that his VMs aren't running from that same appliance. If that assumption is true, and he has a VM host failure, his recovery scenerio could be like the following:

install Veeam on a desktop in the office
import backups from Synology
install hypervisor on new VM host
restore VMs to new VM host

This is a very top level view of steps, but as you can see it's really not that complicated.

Carnival Boy

@Dashrender said:

You can install Veeam where ever you want.

Well, yeah. But just because I can doesn't mean I should.

My second question is basically asking if the repository is a CIFs share on the NAS, or storage on a Windows/Linux VM (with the VMs storage being a datastore on the NAS) . I'm inclined to use the latter, but don't know what's best.

Dashrender

@Carnival-Boy said:

@Dashrender said:

You can install Veeam where ever you want.

Well, yeah. But just because I can doesn't mean I should.

I suppose that's true. If you have a Windows license free to run Veeam on the VM host, I'd probably do that.

My second question is basically asking if the repository is a CIFs share on the NAS, or storage on a Windows/Linux VM (with the VMs storage being a datastore on the NAS) . I'm inclined to use the latter, but don't know what's best.

If the ultimate location of the data is on a NAS, I'd skip the intermediary step of the VM.

here's my setup:
VM running AppAssure Replay (it's like Veeam, mostly) attached to that I have DAS storage - a Drobo Pro that only works with either USB 2.0 or iSCSI. So I have the appliance mapped directly inside my Replay VM. In case of VM host failure, I can move the iSCSI connection to another host, install Replay, import the backups and be back in business.

wrx7m

@Carnival-Boy You can run as a VM and Veeam will backup itself/its own VM. I only use local storage too. If you add the NAS in Veeam, you don't need it to be a VMware datastore.

wrx7m

I am not running any VMs off of the NAS that I backup to. That would just be stupid.

I do have a file share for my Graphic design team on another NAS (older Synology 1812+) that does have a VMware datastore on it and a single VMDK for data. That VMDK is backed up during the normal Veeam backup to the normal backup repository.

wrx7m

@Carnival-Boy Mine is a CFIS share on my NAS that is not shared via Windows but by Synology, itself.

wrx7m

Another thing is that with Veeam you should also be backing up the config. This would allow you to install Veeam wherever and import/restore the config to another box. Access it by going to the Menu and selecting Configuration Backup.

Dashrender

@wrx7m said:

@Carnival-Boy You can run as a VM and Veeam will backup itself/its own VM. I only use local storage too. If you add the NAS in Veeam, you don't need it to be a VMware datastore.

@wrx7m said:

@Carnival-Boy Mine is a CFIS share on my NAS that is not shared via Windows but by Synology, itself.

These two posts seem to contradict themselves. First you mention only using local storage, then mention using a NAS. Do you mean you only use local storage for the VMDKs? If so, that's contradicted by this post.

@wrx7m said:

I do have a file share for my Graphic design team on another NAS (older Synology 1812+) that does have a VMware datastore on it and a single VMDK for data. That VMDK is backed up during the normal Veeam backup to the normal backup repository.

where you mention that you have a VMDK on a different NAS.

wrx7m

@Dashrender I mentioned that I only use local storage as it applied to the Veeam server itself. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I also specifically mentioned that a VM has a separate VMDK that is on the secondary NAS.

Dashrender

@wrx7m said:

@Dashrender I mentioned that I only use local storage as it applied to the Veeam server itself. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I also specifically mentioned that a VM has a separate VMDK that is on the secondary NAS.

thanks for the clarity

DenisKelley

I've run Veeam both (in the past for over a year) on a VM on one of my hosts and now on a physical server. The latter is recent and I'm doing B2D2T and my LTO hangs off the physical server. Just was a free box. Whether physical or virtual, definitely keep the backup config in a different location. With that, it really doesn't take long to get it back somewhere else. My target is still a NAS using CIFS, but that will change probably when I redo my storage and hosts. You get a decent performance boost by using it as a iSCSI target vs CIFS. Mine works fine with the latter, so YMMV.