Backup server for work 24 x 10TB drives - best setup?

[vooze]

Hey guys

While I enjoy our X20 HA for iSCSI VMware workload, I'm setting up a FreeNAS box for backups.

Supermicro SuperStorageServer
1x SSG-5049P-E1CTR36L
1x Intel XEON CLX 5222 4/2P 4C/8T 3.8G 16.5M 10.4GT 105W 3647
6x 8GB DDR4-2933 1Rx8 ECC REG DIMM
24 x 10TB Hard disks, either HGST/WD or Seagate enterprise.
2 spare drives
Boot from mirrored USB.

Now, the question about setting up the drives.

Since this is backup, I don't really need crazy performance, so:
I was thinking 2 vdevs of 12 drives in RAIDz2 or RAIDz3
or maybe 4 vdevs of 6 drives in RAIDz2?

The reason I was thinking either of these 3 setups, is I have room for 12 more hard drives, I want to be able to expand in the future.

Remember this is a backup server, so performance is not the most important thing.

What do you think?


I know I can buy older hardware for cheaper but this is for work, so I want new.

 

[blanchet]

I have such a server for backup. I backup a VMware cluster with Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5u4.
The source (VMware datastores) are hosted on a EMC storage server, the destination (a SMB share) is hosted on the FreeNAS backup server.

When running a full backup ( 80 VMs ~ 4 TB), it takes 6 hours to run the backup job.
The bottleneck is always the source (VMware datastore), and never the destination (FreeNAS backup target).

So I consider that it works very well.

Notes

• RAIDz3 + cold spare is generally better than RAIDz2 + hot spare.
• For the boot, SATADOM in the yellow SATA connectors or small SSD in the rear 2.5" bays are preferable than USB thumb drives.

 

[vooze]

I have such a server for backup. I backup a VMware cluster with Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5u4.
The source (VMware datastores) are hosted on a EMC storage server, the destination (a SMB share) is hosted on the FreeNAS backup server.

When running a full backup ( 80 VMs ~ 4 TB), it takes 6 hours to run the backup job.
The bottleneck is always the source (VMware datastore), and never the destination (FreeNAS backup target).

So I consider that it works very well.

Notes

• RAIDz3 + cold spare is generally better than RAIDz2 + hot spare.
• For the boot, SATADOM in the yellow SATA connectors or small SSD in the rear 2.5" bays are preferable than USB thumb drives.

Thanks for the advice! How are your disks configured?

One giant RAIDz3 pool or?

 

[blanchet]

My pool is built only with 12-wide-raidz3 vdevs.

On the first server, I have 2 vdevs with 14 TB disks, the pool size is 252 TB.
On the second server, I have 3 vdevs with 12 TB disks, the pool size is 324 TB.

 

[Jessep]

What software? Veeam for instance works best on ReFS with specific block sizes. That would require iSCSI presented to a windows server host.

 

[vooze]

My pool is built only with 12-wide-raidz3 vdevs.

On the first server, I have 2 vdevs with 14 TB disks, the pool size is 252 TB.
On the second server, I have 3 vdevs with 12 TB disks, the pool size is 324 TB.

I guess 2 blocks of 12 x raidz3 it will be. Thanks.

What software? Veeam for instance works best on ReFS with specific block sizes. That would require iSCSI presented to a windows server host.

I'm using Veeam with REFS + iSCSI yes.

Now I just need to figure out how to transfer the old 20TB pool data to this. I guess maybe built in replication and then take the old offline.

 

[Jessep]

iSCSI on FreeNAS general rule is keep the used space below 50% to avoid fragmentation performance problems.

May be less of a concern for a backup target.