Forum Discussion

ZETTRE's avatar
ZETTRE
Level 2
9 years ago

Cloud Backup - best practice

Hi, I am running BE2015 to tapes and would like to move towards cloud storage (Amazon S3). Currently I am backing up about 2TB storage including a SQL DB of 150GB on 2 physical servers to tape....
Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec
  • Colin_Weaver's avatar
    Colin_Weaver
    9 years ago

    To add to this as I have now tested it to see the operation myself.

    The drop down menu from the Backup Button only shows Duplicate to Cloud options it as such it appears that only duplicate backup operations to cloud are possible. However it is possible to run D2C (Direct to Cloud) backup jobs by creating a Backup to Disk (B2D) job and  then editing the storage properties within the job so that the target device is the Cloud Device. Apologies for any confusion this may have caused.

    Note: We will be looking to provide more formal documentation regarding this ( within a reasonable timeframe ) and are also looking into the possibility of providing some best practices guidelines.

     

    Some points to consider (for operating practice choices as well as potential best practices) however are

    - any performance differences between B2D2C (Backup to disk or deduplication and then duplicate to cloud) vs D2C (Direct to cloud) as there may be an affect on backup windows against your production environment.

    - amount of data you need to store in the cloud (so identification of critical data instead of everything)

    - GRT capabilities - The S3 cloud device is seen as an OST device so GRT restores will stage in a similar way to tapes

    - SDR limitations - We need to check this point however it is likely remote SDR recovery where Backup Exec Server still exists will still work, possibly slowly,  however direct SDR recovery of a Backup Exec Server almost certainly won't as the ability to configure the cloud device is not available in the bootable WinPE SDR environment. This is similar to the Deduplication limitation where you cannnot SDR recover a Backup Exec Server from a Deduplicatipon Storage Folder.

     

Colin_Weaver's avatar
Colin_Weaver
Moderator
9 years ago

To add to this as I have now tested it to see the operation myself.

The drop down menu from the Backup Button only shows Duplicate to Cloud options it as such it appears that only duplicate backup operations to cloud are possible. However it is possible to run D2C (Direct to Cloud) backup jobs by creating a Backup to Disk (B2D) job and  then editing the storage properties within the job so that the target device is the Cloud Device. Apologies for any confusion this may have caused.

Note: We will be looking to provide more formal documentation regarding this ( within a reasonable timeframe ) and are also looking into the possibility of providing some best practices guidelines.

 

Some points to consider (for operating practice choices as well as potential best practices) however are

- any performance differences between B2D2C (Backup to disk or deduplication and then duplicate to cloud) vs D2C (Direct to cloud) as there may be an affect on backup windows against your production environment.

- amount of data you need to store in the cloud (so identification of critical data instead of everything)

- GRT capabilities - The S3 cloud device is seen as an OST device so GRT restores will stage in a similar way to tapes

- SDR limitations - We need to check this point however it is likely remote SDR recovery where Backup Exec Server still exists will still work, possibly slowly,  however direct SDR recovery of a Backup Exec Server almost certainly won't as the ability to configure the cloud device is not available in the bootable WinPE SDR environment. This is similar to the Deduplication limitation where you cannnot SDR recover a Backup Exec Server from a Deduplicatipon Storage Folder.