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New fast NAS to replicate to another NAS ?

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grimpex

New Around Here
Guys,

Summary scenario:

SBS 2011 essentials server domain environment with 11 workstations, producing large PSD files.

All staff use photoshop an open and work on files across gigabit network, workstations use SSDs - Precision Xeon based.

daily 45Gb of data

Current Server storage 2Tb with USB3 external drives backup routine new data only - de duplication on.

Every so often when approaching server space, files get manually archived onto Netgear Ready DUOs, these NASs have backup routines running but often are unable to backup the new data fast enough onto the external drives plugged into these NASs. New Netgear 102 NAS with 4Tb of storage still backing up, now running for weeks.

Offsite backup not present.

Question 1 :

best practice backup routine to backup 45Gb of data daily onto NAS or external drive , with rotation which is achievable during the night.

Question 2 :

Plan on buying QNAP TS - 421 or SYNOLOGY DS415 - feel free to advice
Plan on moving all archived data on these large NAS drives as well as Server Data backup with replication to another identical NAS in another building nearby. RSYNC ?

Objectives
:

create safe DR plan for this size of data 45Gb daily accross 2 locations on the same network
- thought is to utilise dual network cards on the NAS boxes to increase bandwidth

Also achieve 3Tb of archive data to be synced across 2 locations as data needs to be visible on LAN before permanent archive

ON ANOTHER CONFUSION - would not doing RAID at all be faster as per below ?

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-basics/30060-smart-sohos-dont-do-raid

Thank you
 
I suspect but am guessing, that 45GB every day shouldn't be done with rSync on a gigE LAN. Too slow.
I'd backup that NAS using eSATA (if it has that), or USB3.
 
45GB of data per day should not take very long. I don't know what kind of overhead rsynch has for determining de-dupe/file changes, but that should take less than 10 minutes to backup over gigabit LAN unless those are very small files to relatively slow spinning disks.

That said, looking at the Netgear 102 reviews, it is PAINFULLY slow at backups, only about 8-9MB/sec. Not sure what the network performance test involves for file size for something like that (I'd suspect large files probably are somewhat faster than a directory backup, but I am still only seeing 20-30MB/sec in a lot of the tests as it's peak performance).

At a minimum looking at the DS415+ (I can't find the exact same testing methodology for the DS415, maybe too new), that is over 4x the performance of the Netgear 102 in things like directory copy and backups.

Large file straight copy performance is only a modest amount faster (more or less real gigabit LAN speeds, then Netgear 102 seems to cap around 90MB/sec or so for large files).

So I'd think you'd have a VERY healthy increase in backup performance.

That said, a real file server might serve you better, especially if that 45GB is for some reason fairly small files.

I know with actual backups (through Synctoy, not rsync, but it DOES do a number of the same routines, though dedupe is not one of them) even with fairly small files I see >80MB/sec of performance (it would deffinitely be >140MB/sec of performance if I had a second drive in the machine for RAID0), which is roughly 2.5x faster than the DS415+ and roughly 10x faster than the Netgear 102, and my server is relatively lightweight and cheap gear.
 
Can you send me your logs from your 102 (http://www.readynas.com/kb/faq/misc/how_do_i_send_all_logs)

Depending on how you have configured it there might be some things you could do to improve performance.

Are you backing up to a share on the NAS? If so, what are the settings for the share?

Or are you backing up to an external disk connected to the NAS?

What software are you using to run these backups? Are you running the backup job on the backup source or the destination or another machine again?
 
I misspoke. My 35GB drive images from my PC to the NAS take 15 minutes or so. The backup software has enough work to do that the gigE utilization is more like 60%. This backup is not I/O bound. Perhaps commonplace.

If I merely copy big files, of course the speeds get closer to gigE.
 
I misspoke. My 35GB drive images from my PC to the NAS take 15 minutes or so. The backup software has enough work to do that the gigE utilization is more like 60%. This backup is not I/O bound. Perhaps commonplace.

If I merely copy big files, of course the speeds get closer to gigE.

Backups often aren't I/O bound on the network connection. A lot of times they are CPU bound. It kind of depends on the backup software/routine. IIRC Rsynch does the comparative stuff while also transfering data.

Synchtoy actually compiles what needs to be transfered before doing any actual file transfers on the network. Which adds advanced lag, but then the transfer itself is closer to I/O bound (it isn't fully, in my experience with dual links Synchtoy runs at around 210-215MB/sec when it isn't disk limited, where as straight SMB transfers are more like 230MB/sec). Fortunately full backups scans generally don't take long, about 30 seconds to scan through around 10,000 files to determine what actions need to be taken.
 
Note that I spoke of doing a (compressed via run-length-encoding) drive image, not a file-by-file backup.
 

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