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Need some recommendations on NAS device to store backups. It will only be used for backups storage and nothing else. It will store only Virtual servers (vmware) backups using Veeam backup software.

We might get 2 NAS devices and store the 2nd NAS device at some of our offsite location, so they both can sync the backups. The sync should be one way only. Onsite to offsite.

To save disk space, is it OK to setup the NAS device with independent 5 disks without any RAID and then use each disk for Monday-Friday backups. Even if one disk fails we will loose only one days backup file and still have another 4 disks available. Or we will keep a spare disk for any future disk failures. The above setup will save my disk space which I will be loosing when setup in RAID1/5/6/10. Let me know if this setup will be good / bad for a SMB with 50 users.

Which NAS device do you recommend ?

Any other suggestions are appreciated, thanks in advance

@Synology

7 Spice ups
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IMHO, I think JBOD would be a bad idea, go with RAID6.

I have a few Thecus N8900s. Only had one lockup/failure over the few years I’ve had them. I’ve had to replace 2 drives also, 1 in each system.

Up Time: 189 Days 10 Hours 51 Minutes

Up Time: 119 days 9 hours 7 minutes

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What is your budget and how much storage space are you looking for? There are a lot of options out there with a wide range of prices. Exablox is practically designed for what you are talking about, plus you wouldn’t need to separate the disks like that, but it is not cheap.

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as Kevin9448 suggests, from your requirements Exablox may be a good solution. With Veeam certification, inline deduplication, zero-config scale-out storage, remote replication, and a solution that doesn’t use RAID and protects against two drive failures we have designed a solution for the mid-size enterprise.

how much storage will you be protecting with Veeam?

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In addition to Sean’s question, what’s your budget for this device?

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Looking around 10TB storage , so we don’t have to worry about cleanups. Around $1500 is fine.

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While the capacity target is appropriate, OneBlox will be more expensive than $1500. As you consider a solution (Exablox or others), consider how your storage capacity requirements will change over time and how you can avoid either 1) another storage silo or 2) a forklift upgrade.

We do have a spiceworks promotion currently available. Send me a DM and I can give you more information if you have flexibility on your budget.

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Whether you can afford to not have any kind of RAID in your setup is driven by your requirements. You’ve already stated that you can afford to lose a day’s worth of data, what about 2 days, or more? Finding a NAS solution that allows for automated sync to an offsite is pretty easy. Synology offers this setup and it works pretty flawlessly.

One question, you are looking for 10TB storage but if the plan is to have a full backup with incremental backups then your proposed approach may not work all that effectively. Using a single disk for each daily backup suggests you would have a full backup on a single disk then incrementals on other disks? Or are you only planning full backups each day (not sure why you would want this approach though).

You’re using Veeam so you are likely familiar with their compression and reverse incremental backups. Why not have 2 NAS devices as you mentioned but configure 1 large RAID 10 (if you are using 4 disks) or RAID 6 if using more than 4 disks and maximize the use of the Veeam capabilities with compression and reverse incrementals?

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If you choose to go with the “1 drive 1 day” backup scenario rather than RAID you might look at an 8 bay Netswap NAS from high-Rely. I DO see the logic in this setup. While it is not very space efficient, it is KISS (Keep it Simple). But the only reason I can see you doing it is if you also want transportable drives where each backup is it’s own entity. If you’re going to leave the drives in place and replicate one of the other getting a NAS with RAID array makes more sense

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I agree. A single RAID 6 is faster and vastly more robust. It will protect against losing ANYTHING rather than limiting the damage while pretty much guaranteeing some loss.

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Actually it is far more complex and that’s one of the reasons I don’t like it. Managing five failure domains and five data stores instead of one that isn’t going to fail and designing your system around having to replaced failed systems is far more complex. A single RAID 6 or RAID 10 design would be easier to set up and easier to maintain and much easier to deal with after a drive has failed (just swap the drive and go rather than starting over and reconfiguring everything.)

3 Spice ups
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Around $1,500 you are pretty limited. ReadyNAS, Synology and SAM-SD options would be best.

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Which Synology NAS devices do you all recommend ?

If they work flawlessly then wouldn’t mind spending more.

I would convince my management to spend more now and be happy in future, rather than trying to save $$$ now and spending my time fixing things or doing lot more maintenance work later.

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If you’re looking for desktop factor NAS the DS1813+ (replaced with the DS1815+) could give you room to grow with 8 drive bays. If you don’t need that many bays then the DS415+ could work well. The RS line of NAS are rack mount. All of them use the same management software so you’ll get mostly the same functionality across the line. There are small differences between models so go check them out at the synology.com site and see what suits your needs best.

3 Spice ups
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Haven’t we been here before?

For your budget, Synology.

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Synology DS1813+

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+1 for Synology. I have the DS412+ for this exact purpose except it’s the target for backing up my Hyper-V environment using Altaro over iSCSI. Populated with WD Red drives in OBR10 gave me the space I needed and then some. Has been pretty bulletproof for some time now.

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I missed the memo on why not Qnap? do people here have quality or support issues with them?

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We have a setup that has some similarities to what is proposed. We backup our server to a Synology NAS configured as RAID5 + hot spare (if I were setting it up today, I agree with others - RAID6 on the NAS). Then in a near-offsite location (another building on our campus), another, simpler Synology NAS configured as JBOD. We just use Synology’s built-in network backup tool to backup from our main NAS to our near-offsite. Since the near-offsite backup is a copy of a copy of a copy, just in case of physical site loss (i.e., fire, theft) at the primary site, we felt JBOD for that NAS was sufficient, and certainly cost-effective. If we lose the JBOD, no big deal, we replace the failed drive(s), start with a blank NAS again, and re-run the network backup on the main NAS. Nothing lost, not a time consuming recovery process.

I heartily recommend Synology as a NAS for this type of task. We’ve been very pleased.

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It’s from a combination of support experiences (although more recently some people have started reporting some good ones too, which new) and their stated SLA. The physical devices are fine (maybe not the best, but not bad) and the feature set is good.

There have been issues with their HCL being faked, support not being available in English and SLA forcing more than a fortnight without access to any device at all (send back, wait two weeks, replacement is shipped to you, data lost.)