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BackupExecNewb's avatar
BackupExecNewb
Level 4
10 years ago

Backup Exec Deduplication - Seeding and 1st Backups

Hi,

I have a number of sites that I want to use the BE2014 dedup option for my backups.  The remote sites have 2TB plus of data.  It will take forever to back this up over the wire.  Symantec had recommended running up a media server at the remote site, backing up the data to a dedup volume, and then move the BE server and dedup volume to the local site and run a duplicaiton job.

Has anyone had any expeience with this?  Ideally I'd like to use a VM to act as the temp remote site media server.  However, storage will still be an issue, as I don't have enough local storage to present to the ESXI host.  USB drives are not supported for dedup volumes, so all I can think of is a cheap NAS box running iSCSI.  Ideally, I'd want something that would be easy to transport around. 

Also I imagine I'll need CASO in order to duplicate the dedup volumes between media servers.  This isn't available with the trial version of BE is it?

Most importanrly, I'd also like to verify if this method is carried out, that the subsequent 1st full backup from the remote site to the duplicated dedup volume will in fact run quickly, as the data should now be seeded.

I'd love to hear from anyone that has had some real world experience with this.  I would hate to ship it out, set it up, only to find out that it doesn't work.

 

Thanks

2014
Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec
Deduplication Option
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    10 years ago

    No.  Not sending data across the wire may not reduce the duration of the backup significantly and while the job is running, you risk job failure.  Doing a local backup reduces the chance of failure due to poor link quality.

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  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    How are you going to do an optimised duplication without a dedup folder at the remote location?

    Backing up your remote servers from the central site means that if there are any dropped packets between the two sites, your job will fail.  This is regardless of whether you do any seeding or using client-side dedup.

  • BackupExecNewb's avatar
    BackupExecNewb
    Level 4
    10 years ago

    I'm not.  I'm trying to determine whether it's worth temporarily setting up an optimized dedup environment to expedite the 1st backup process.  Untilmtately, I will be only be using remote site backups to a central site dedup volume.

    I can already seed the remote site data pretty easily,as I have backed up the remote site DFSR replica data to the dedup volume.  Small remote site 1st backup tests (i.e. 1GB) indicate that not much data's going over the link, which means client side dedup is working. However, when I do this with 500GB - 2TB of data, it going to take a very long time.  And the longer it takes the greater the chance of the job failing due to dropped packets.

    If temporarily setting up another media server and running optimized duplication betweeen the sites would make the initial backup go faster and/or be more reliable then it would be worth the effort.  If, however, it still will take the same amount of time to do the first initial backup, regardless of how the data is seeded, then there's no point, and I'll just have to let the 1st full backup run and hope for no failures due to dropped packets.

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    It is not just the first full backup that you have to worry about.  You would have to do full backups often so that your backup chain does not become unwieldy.  You cannot do incrementals forever.

  • BackupExecNewb's avatar
    BackupExecNewb
    Level 4
    10 years ago

    Absolutely.  But isn't the whole thing that this shoud not take long if the data is unchanged?  The majority of the data is stagnent.  Even a full shoud not result in the data being copied over the wire.

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    10 years ago

    No.  Not sending data across the wire may not reduce the duration of the backup significantly and while the job is running, you risk job failure.  Doing a local backup reduces the chance of failure due to poor link quality.

  • teiva-boy's avatar
    teiva-boy
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    BackupExec's Client-side dedupe, does virtually nothing to speed up backups.  All it does is reduce bandwidth.  I've found in almost every case the backup durations are roughly the same.

    That said, perhaps the Checkpoint restart option will be your best bet?  http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO99495

    You'll still get failed jobs, but it'll hopefully try to restart where it left off.

     

    If you get tired of this, There is always EMC's Avamar, that pretty much blows the doors off anything for WAN based backups, but it'll cost ya...  The old Symantec PureDisk actually did okay with remote WAN backups, but they killed that product after migrating the core dedupe engine into BE and NBU.  Then didn't bother to port some of PureDisks key features that made it good for remote WAN backups...