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I have VMware with a SAN, and want to introduce a Synology for backup and maybe more

We have a small VMware environment (one host, 5 VMS, 4 TB of storage) that is backed up using Veeam to a usb disk and also to the cloud. We purchased a Synology NAS (5 x 10 TB disks) that we want to use for at least storage of Veeam backup files. But, I wanted some input on best practices. How would you use the space? All one big volume? Some number of smaller volumes? Use it all for backup storage, or would you consider setting aside a few TB to use as an additional datastore for VMware in addition to the storage of backup files? It would not be a very high performance datastore, VM stored there as a replica could be up quickly should there be an issue with the primary datastore. Just looking for any best practices or input on what you have done that has worked well.

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Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

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Member_2_231077

Might be worth having a small datastore with enough infrastructure to restore the main SAN on it.

Mr Tortu(r)e

hi,

well, it's a choice !
Here my +/- for each

Put it all for backup :

better retention policy
simple configuration
you can use Veeam VM Instant recovery, "somehow" same as running replica on your new Nas
but it case you loose your main San storage, many things (performance, storage usage, backup) will be worse than running replica on NFS datastore on nas.. So you should really quickly replace your main storage

Keep a small part for NFS datastore :

more long-lasting to run VM on your Nas if you completly loose your main storage on San
and you can still do backup of your replica
usable for dev-test or others means
less backup retention

I suppose I would choose choice 2, but as always, depending of your needs (backup retention, RTO, etc...)