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I have two DroboPro's. Each DroboPro has a single GbE connection.

I have 3 servers. Two servers have 5 GbE connections (2 onboard, 2 adapter, 1 adapter). The other server has 4 GbE connections (2 onboard, 2 adapter).

I have 2 network switches, stacked - Netgear GS748TS. There are 35 workstations connected.

What's the best method for connecting everything so that data backups from server 1 and 2, go to server 3 without interferring with user traffic. The two DroboPro's replicate via DFS.

Thanks!

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  • Are the three servers close to each other? and are you using both your switches currently or can you get a third 8 port switch?
    – Winter Faulk
    Nov 8, 2012 at 16:50
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    do you have one or two? serverfault.com/questions/446791/iscsi-whats-faster Maybe keep this all in one question?
    – Rex
    Nov 8, 2012 at 17:18
  • @Rex They're two different questions. Just because they're about the same equipment doesn't mean they shouldn't be treated separately.
    – MDMarra
    Nov 8, 2012 at 17:28

1 Answer 1

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What you want to do is create a private "backup" VLAN on a dedicated subnet.

You need to assign it an unused IP range and connect a dedicated "backup" NIC to this VLAN. Make sure these interfaces don't automatically register with your local DNS servers. Then, you would create a static route on each server to the backup subnet and bind it to the backup NIC using the route.exe command. Same goes for the backup server.

After doing this, all backup traffic will occur over the dedicated links and will not traverse your production data network.

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  • Depending on the quality of your switches you may want to put the backup network on dedicated physical switches, not just a vLAN -- Particularly with Netgear switches if your backups are very high traffic and you're using multi-Gb trunks you might hit the switch forwarding speed limit before you max out the bandwidth you're talking about...
    – voretaq7
    Nov 8, 2012 at 17:28
  • @voretaq7 Normally, I would have addressed this, but he said in a previous question that his 48-port GbE switches have a backplane rated at 96Gbps. :)
    – MDMarra
    Nov 8, 2012 at 17:29
  • Yup, that's what Netgear claims for the GS748TS. My experience with Netgear hardware is the switching performance at the high end is usually somewhat lower than the data sheet claims (especially as you approach buffer saturation).
    – voretaq7
    Nov 8, 2012 at 17:39
  • Would a GS108 (8port GbE) switch be adequate? Or would I need to use something higher-end? I can't seem to justify spending 300 bucks for a rack switch for something that will only contain 5-8 physical connections at the most. (By justify, I mean "explain to the boss that we need to buy a 24port switch that has server-grade performance to connect 5 physical devices")
    – Unplugme71
    Nov 8, 2012 at 20:42
  • If it's just for backup traffic, I wouldn't worry too much about it to be honest. The advantage to a high end switch is that you can grow into it.
    – MDMarra
    Nov 8, 2012 at 20:52

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