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I have IBM server with SAS drives and ESXi Server with many VM (not production).

Now for backups of VM i have two options

  1. But NAS drive and use that on network
  2. Get USB drive , attach to FreeNAS VM on Esxi server and then backup there

I want to know which one will have faster speed

Nework speed is 1GBps and usb is 2.0. But i am thinking of using usb3.0 Pcie card

Its my home lab only not prod and by NAS i mean network drive avaiable in market single disk only

user3132561
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  • As is usually the case, **it depends**. But my **broad guess**, which may be completely wrong for your particular environment and workload, is that the NAS will be quite a lot faster, especially if it's a multi-spindle NAS. Get them both, and test; or get the USB drive, which will be cheap, and see if it's fast enough for your needs. – MadHatter May 05 '14 at 06:05
  • This will to some extent depend upon the speed of your network and the speed of your USB port - neither of which you told us. – user9517 May 05 '14 at 06:09
  • I have added the details – user3132561 May 05 '14 at 06:11
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    If this is a lab then why don't you just erm use the lab and test it? Also please read [about] and note the exclusions. – user9517 May 05 '14 at 06:20
  • http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1022290 - `It is not possible to utilize a USB 3.0 device connected to the physical host; the device will be ignored`. So you will be limited to USB 2.0 performance. – Zoredache May 05 '14 at 20:39
  • @Zoredache well not really, since he wants to back up VMs the backup software will also run in a VM and not in the ESXi host kernel, thus client-connected USB passthrough will be used which supports USB 3. – Reality Extractor May 06 '14 at 18:13
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    @RealityExtractor, The statement client connected means is referring to a connection **via the vsphere client**. You can't run the vsphere client on an ESXi host, and he seemed to want to have the USB drive connected to the ESXI host. So what he is describing is NOT client connected. – Zoredache May 06 '14 at 18:30
  • @Zoredache so he did, it says right there to attach USB to FreeNAS, missed it, thanks, will update answer – Reality Extractor May 06 '14 at 22:15

1 Answers1

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As a sweeping generalization: USB 2 will be slower than a single physical drive on the network, USB 3 will be significantly faster than a single physical drive on the network.

Having said that, the real answer is that it depends. If you have an array of drives as your network target then it's possible to saturate a 1 GbE network link and your network target will be faster.

Other than that, if these are not production VMs then I would save myself the effort of backing them up at all.

UPDATE: As @Zoredache pointed out, vSphere currently (May 2014, v 5.5) doesn't support USB 3.0 pass-through so backing up via the network will undoubtedly be faster than to a USB 2.0 drive that's attached to the FreeNAS VM via pass-through.

Reality Extractor
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