Unsolved Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?
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Hey all,
Yea, so it's been a while since I bought a new server for our company but the time is coming
I need to replace a 10 year old Dell PowerEdge that was bought new direct from Dell at the time. I know xByte used to get a lot of love on various forums, but like I said, I haven't had to purchase server gear in a while so I just wanted to check in with you all to see if they are still recommended for quality gear? I know some companies change for the worse, just hoping that is not the case with xByte.
And not related to xByte, but might as well ask here, my new server is going to be used to store Veeam backups which means I'm looking at needing a decent amount of storage. I was going to put 8 14TB drives (Dell drives bought with the server through xByte if I go that route) in RAID 6 for 84TB raw storage. Is that size array unwise for RAID 6?
Thanks all!
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@beta said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
I just wanted to check in with you all to see if they are still recommended for quality gear?
Yes
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@beta said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
my new server is going to be used to store Veeam backups which means
If you are only storing backups, then you don't need to pay for server hardware. Buy a quality NAS, like a Synology, and drop disks in it.
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This is what I mean. A quality Synology is only $1000 and it has 4 network ports you can team for better than gigabit throughput.
Buy whatever size disks you need to make whatever level of rdundancy you need and be done.
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this is what we did instead of a dedicated backup server. Nas has worked perfectly and added benefits including o365 backups without a separate license purchase
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@jaredbusch said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
This is what I mean. A quality Synology is only $1000 and it has 4 network ports you can team for better than gigabit throughput.
Buy whatever size disks you need to make whatever level of rdundancy you need and be done.
The DS series is consumer quality so not a valid comparison to a real server. But if you don't need server grade quality and a desktop form factor works fine, then its good value.
The RS series is quality that is comparable to a server and also rack mounted.
But if the OP intend to run it past it's warranty, I suggest getting a server instead. Much easier to source spare parts.
Also better getting a real server if you need do things like swapping out fans or power supplies at a moments notice. The RS3618xs above doesn't have things such as hotplug power supplies or even redundant power. Synology might have a higher grade series for that though.
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@beta said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
I was going to put 8 14TB drives (Dell drives bought with the server through xByte if I go that route) in RAID 6 for 84TB raw storage. Is that size array unwise for RAID 6?
It's not unwise but you have to take things like rebuilding time into consideration. RAID 6 will rebuild fast on a server with a standard CPU, about 24 hours with those drives, but only if the array is not in use. If it's in use it can take a really long time.
You can plan for that however and have two arrays. Use both but if one is needed to be rebuilt, use just the other one for backup.
Or split the storage into to two backup servers for more options on rebuilding, redundancy and updates/upgrades.
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@jaredbusch has anyone experienced problems with corrupted backups like this
https://forums.veeam.com/veeam-backup-replication-f2/synology-nas-as-repo-t77177.html
I have never seen it myself, but it doesn't mean it is not happening. -
@beta Not into NAS for backups. If something goes wrong on the NAS side there's not a lot that can be done. They are too cookie cutter.
https://forums.veeam.com/veeam-backup-replication-f2/synology-nas-as-repo-t77177.html
Just don't do NAS.
Build a purpose built box with XFS and keep it isolated from everywhere except a PAW that's nowhere near a perp entry point.
https://www.veeam.com/blog/v11-immutable-backup-storage.html
Then the box can be set up to be immutable. -
@jaredbusch said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
@beta said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
my new server is going to be used to store Veeam backups which means
If you are only storing backups, then you don't need to pay for server hardware. Buy a quality NAS, like a Synology, and drop disks in it.
Agreed, better way to go.
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@phlipelder said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
If something goes wrong on the NAS side there's not a lot that can be done. They are too cookie cutter.
Actually that's a reason that I like Synology. You can do almost anything to repair it because it's well known hardware with extremely well known enterprise software RAID that is portable to other devices both NAS and custom built.
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@phlipelder said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
https://forums.veeam.com/veeam-backup-replication-f2/synology-nas-as-repo-t77177.html
That forum is so full of misinformation. If that guy really works for Veeam, I'd never trust Veeam again. He's just out selling hardware solutions based on FUD. He even mentions that Veeam has vendors pay for Veeam to support them, which he is doing.
And people saying to use SAN instead of NAS. There's tons of anecdotes in there of "this bad thing happened when I did X" but "didn't happen when I did Y" without any clear research into all of the things that they changed. No one is doing testing, no one is checking the same setup but NTFS vs ReFS or whatever.
The real problem is likely that Synology depends on checks that it needs to do on the filesystem because it does insanely risky storage operations that are expected to corrupt from time to time based on the math, and so SAN is necessary because you need storage intelligence from higher in the stack to check the data. They just don't want to say that for some reason and instead lie about it being that hardware RAID controllers are magic and don't corrupt and the same algorithms not on an ASIC are flaky and useless. That thread is all BS.
Bottom line is... Veeam is telling you their own stuff isn't stable, he's super clear about that.
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@phlipelder said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
Build a purpose built box with XFS and keep it isolated from everywhere except a PAW that's nowhere near a perp entry point.
From that same Veeam thread, this will have the same problems. Appears that Veeam can only do its checksumming on a SAN via NTFS or ReFS (which I'm not sure I'd trust yet as it is known to be unstable until at least quite recently.) So, NTFS if you want to be safe. Which you can do on purpose built hardware, and on Linux, but just not with XFS (which SHOULD be the best option if Veeam knew how to handle their own storage properly) or ZFS (which should be a great option, too.)
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@scottalanmiller said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
@phlipelder said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
If something goes wrong on the NAS side there's not a lot that can be done. They are too cookie cutter.
Actually that's a reason that I like Synology. You can do almost anything to repair it because it's well known hardware with extremely well known enterprise software RAID that is portable to other devices both NAS and custom built.
It was a fellow Microsoft MVP that put the NAS vendors under the gun to get their collective shit together because the NAS units kept corrupting ShadowProtect incremental file chains.
http://sbsfaq.com/what-have-qnap-done-about-the-data-corruption-issue/
There's zero, zippo, zilch, accountability to the end user with an econo box. None.
When the shit hits the fan, I want real support with real people. That's gonna cost more than some box with a baby motherboard, some memory, some sort of flash storage for the *NIX OS, and whoever's drives in the drive bay.
I can't count the number of times we've had SMB clients using a NAS as a file share hit issues with that NAS, its repository, or just outright resetting itself requiring GetDataBack *NIX RAID Reconstructor to hopefully pull it all in.
As far as the Veeam slamming goes, no comment. We've been working with the product for five years or more now. Before that it was StorageCraft's ShadowProtect. Both were, and are, flawless and there when we need to recover sometimes when things are extremely stressful after an all-out blowout.
Note that Veaam has a NAS Backup product. It works. Use it.
That being said, Immutable is here to stay. Veeam was one of the first on the block to utilize it built-in to the product. We're tied into BackBlaze B2 for all of our cloud tiers that are not running on our own backup (Cloud Connect) systems.
https://www.veeam.com/blog/v11-immutable-backup-storage.html
Didier's Part 1 for building one:
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/veeam-hardened-linux-repository-part-1 -
@phlipelder said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
When the shit hits the fan, I want real support with real people. That's gonna cost more than some box with a baby motherboard, some memory, some sort of flash storage for the *NIX OS, and whoever's drives in the drive bay.
That's the thing, it's Linux, so the top enterprise support is available. That you got it from a NAS vendor doesn't really matter. Sure, it would be BETTER with better hardware and a more enterprise version of Linux. I'm not saying it doesn't get better. But you can get all that enterprise support in any low end NAS box if you want, because the components being supported are universal.
Just like if you were to put Windows on a Dell server... the quality of enterprise level support comes down to who can support Windows. That it's on Dell or a piece of crap hardware might make a tiny difference for hardware uptime, but has no bearing on the quality of support that matters. The NAS box can be replaced for a Dell, HPE, Cisco, whatever big "support" brand you want after data loss if you want. The hardware is actually interchangeable here.
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@phlipelder said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
I can't count the number of times we've had SMB clients using a NAS as a file share hit issues with that NAS, its repository, or just outright resetting itself requiring GetDataBack *NIX RAID Reconstructor to hopefully pull it all in.
If you have cheap hardware failure, yeah, that's going to be a problem. But I've never seen anything like that on a Synology.
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@phlipelder said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
As far as the Veeam slamming goes, no comment. We've been working with the product for five years or more now. Before that it was StorageCraft's ShadowProtect. Both were, and are, flawless and there when we need to recover sometimes when things are extremely stressful after an all-out blowout.
The Veeam slamming was by Veeam's engineer, not by me. I was just pointing out what Veeam claimed about themselves. And I'd tend to trust them.
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@phlipelder said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
Note that Veaam has a NAS Backup product. It works. Use it.
I thought that they exclusively used SAN because they had problems with the NAS protocols?
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@phlipelder said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
Note that Veaam has a NAS Backup product. It works. Use it.
A product to use NAS, or a NAS themselves? Got a link, I searched but am not sure which product you are referencing.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
@phlipelder said in Is xByte still recommended for server purchases around here?:
Note that Veaam has a NAS Backup product. It works. Use it.
I thought that they exclusively used SAN because they had problems with the NAS protocols?
One can back up a NAS to S3 via Veeam. Sorry for not being clear.
