I am looking to buy a dedicated desktop workstation to run UrBackup server. We have a fleet of around 20 laptops that will backup files and disk images on a scheduled basis.
The laptops are connected WiFi only.
The Desktop that will run the Server will save the files to the 2TB NAS (Synology DS218J)
We were able to perform some backups using my personal desktop (win10 pro, 8GB, x64) and was uploading at 200mbps (each laptop, and sometimes up to 4 laptop simultaneously).
We then moved the urbackup db to a MiniPC Stick (Win7, 2GB, x32), and we could not speed up the backup above 50mbps (one at a time).
This led us to ask ourselves about the Minimum requirements to run UrBackup Server :
OS(win Pro or Server?), CPU, RAM, SSD size…etc.
I’m running Debian 10/11 Hyper-V VM, x2 vCPUs (2.5Ghz), 4-8Gb (4Gb for 1-20 clients, 8Gb for 20-50 clients). I recommend to use RAID6 (hardware with 2-4Gb cache is better) as underlying storage and move backup storage on dedicated partition. In my case for VM OS enough 32-64Gb. Backup storage size depends on your backup scheduling (try to start from 20Tb). I use this scheduling: full image once each 30 days on [Sat,Sun] no more than 2 full images, incremental images [Mon,Wed,Fri] nighty and no more than 20 incremental images, partition selection ALL_NONUSB. I’m not doing currently file backups, but you can (I recommend to schedule in time windows between images).
P.S. No mater what you choose Windows 10/11 (clean, optimize, and configure it for 24/7 usage as server before) or Windows Server OS, as log as you can run Hyper-V you can use this hardware for any other tasks. Recommend you to select mini server (something like HPE Proliant ML110 Gen10) or enterprise grade workstation with single 8+ cores CPU or multiple CPUs and 16+ Gb RAM (you need at 4-8Gb for host OS). Hardware expensive today then you can find something refurbished/used for this purpose as well.
My setup is on a physical [albeit fairly low grade] host that is an old-ish HP Microserver that has SATA drives, not in a RAID array - have a separate backup of the drive so still have backup resiliency if the UrBackup drive fails…
Host has a single, dual-core processor and only about 8 GB of memory…and is also a file server…
Backups of clients run fairly smoothly (clients are all wireless, or remote, host is LAN connected) for both image and file backups, though takes a while for backups of itself - file backup takes about 5 hours, but there is around 1 TB of data, and have Full job running daily…
There are compute intensive elements within an Urbackup system, and there are I/O elements.
In my experience, you definitely will benefit with more RAM (for UrBackup and for caching of transferred file data), and if you have good I/O on the backup server. I would rank the priority in the following way for the workload you are proposing:
RAM (8GB min, 16GB preferred)
Disk I/O (SSD if you have them, but mechanical disks with a caching RAID controller will work also)
CPU (4-core min, 8-core preferred)
Network (1Gbps wired min; if possible to aggregate links, then that is better)
That MiniPC stick is constrained in a lot of ways, including RAM and CPU. And x64 Windows is better from a performance standpoint.
I would go with more RAM and slower CPU if absolutely forced, vs the opposite.
hahahaha i use Urbackup on a VM (Hyper-V) with 512 RAM only 2 virtual CPUs (turnkey linux core edition) but my backup folder is an NFS Mount pointing a synology NAS (btrfs), backing up 10 workstations (windows 10) every 24 hours (diferencial), 28 days for full backups, only files.
