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moowho's avatar
moowho
Level 2
12 years ago

Duplicating Backup Set to Deduplication Storage

Hi all!

Currently I am backing up a server (multiple drives) to a storage disk M:\ 

This disk has recently been filling up, and I would benefit from having this server's data deduplicated so I have changed the job for the server to backup to a deduplication drive, instead. The differential backups run fine, but the full backup fails with a read/write error. While I am looking into resolve this, I still want to clear up the backup sets from the M drive.

MY QUESTION:

If I choose to duplicate the backup sets for this particular server (all the selected drives) from a storage disk to a deduplication storage disk (copy all the backup sets from one drive to another) will backup exec deduplicate from the storage disk, as in, will it know to create database entries for this server, or will it simply copy the B2D files to the dedup storage (i would hope not, but I'm not sure). I just want to make sure that the previous backup sets I have for this sever can be deduplicated properly, and have full restore functionality; and also ensure that I can delete the backup sets from the M drive with no worries.

Thanks in advance for any help!

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  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    12 years ago

    When you duplicate a backup set to a dedup folder, the contents will be deduplicated.  It will not be a mere copying of the .bkf or .img files to the dedup folder.

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  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    12 years ago

     do you guys have any idea why my full backups to the dedup storage fail with the generic read/write error

    You should log a support case with Symantec and get them to look at this problem

  • moowho's avatar
    moowho
    Level 2
    12 years ago

    @pkh

    Thank you very much!!! This puts me at ease :)

    @teiva-boy

    Thanks for the clarification; I only have 3 weeks of full backups for this server, since we recently started utilizing backup exec (on more than just 10 servers). I have configured the server in question to be backed up on the deduplication storage, so hopefully the ratio will be much better after a month.

    Also, do you guys have any idea why my full backups to the dedup storage fail with the generic read/write error, yet the differential backups succeed? We are not using tape storage. 

    Thanks, again; I really appreciate this community's eagerness to help noobs.

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

    You will have to duplicate multiple full backups into the dedupe store to see any real deduplication benefits. Or at best you'll get 2:1-4:1.  Keep that in mind.  Having only a single full or only a couplle weeks worth is not enough to really benefit from deduplication.

    Dedupe rates get better over time, the more retention you keep on disk.  Minimum 4 weeks of fulls.

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    When you duplicate a backup set to a dedup folder, the contents will be deduplicated.  It will not be a mere copying of the .bkf or .img files to the dedup folder.