Backup Exec with an Oracle DB agent over WAN

[dyasny]

I have a BE 2010 (moving to the latest soon) and an oracle database that's in another country. The DB is about 20Gb in size with small daily increments.

I would like to know if there will ne a problem with backing that database up over a VPN link between the two sites. 

I expect the avg latency to be about 50ms and the bandwidth available around 2mbps

Also, How can I do the initial seeding? Is it at all possible?

Thanks

D

[pkh]

1) BE does not support seeding, unless you are using dedup

2) You got to test your backup.  BE is very sensitive about line quality.  If there is any dropped packets, then the backup will fail.  To minimise bandwidth requirements, you should use optimised duplication between the two sites.  Optimised duplication requires the dedup option on both ends a well as CASO.

[dyasny]

Thanks fot the reply. So I'll need BE2012 with dedupe on the server side, and the agent should also have dedupe? Or... how does that work? 

As for the remote backup solution, is there a better way than relying on the agent? I'm open for additional suggestions, that data is quite critical and I can't trust it to the local USB disks and db dumps

[pkh]

You cannot do any backups without using an agent.

Since your data is critical, I would suggest that you use optimised duplication.  You would need to do this.

1) set up a media server on both ends with the dedup option and use CASO to manage the remote media server.

2) at the remote location, do your backup to the dedup folder and then duplicate the backup to the central media server's dedup folder.

[dyasny]

OK, please correct me if I'm wrong, what you suggest is that

1. I buy two BE2012 with deduplication, one for each physical site

2. backup the database locally into a deduplicated staging area

3. replicate the staged backups to a remote site 

Some questions here:

- what is CASO?

- what kind of licenses will I need for all of this to work, supposing I don't use BE for anything but this particular backup

I haven't touched BE since v2010 and even then it was used as a local backup server with a few agents, no complex setups at all, so I'll really appreciate it if you can explain things in a more newb friendly fashion, so I don't come back asking what an acronym means, or whether the remote replication is some kind of async algorythm (is it, btw?)

Thanks

[pkh · Accepted solution]

CASO = Central Admin Server Option.

We often use acronyms in the forum to save wear and tear on our fingers.  If you are not sure what an acronym stands for, click on 

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/acronyms-and-alphabet-soup

which will lead you to my glossary

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/glossary-make-sense-alphabet-soup

============

When you do a backup to a dedup folder, it is not staging.  It is an actual backup which you can use to restore your data.  When you do a backup over a WAN link, all the backup data need to go across the link and the bandwidth might not be able to handle it.  When you duplicate a backup set between two dedup folders (optimised duplication), only the changed data block will go across the link, thus minimising bandwidth requirement.  Furthermore, you can throttle the bandwidth required to further minimise the bandwidth requirement.

For this setup, you will need

2 x BE core licence with the dedup option.  The dedup option is now part of ESO (Enterprise Server Option).

1 x Agent for Application and Databases licence to backup your Oracle database.

See this document

2012 Portfolio Licensing Guide

Before doing any purchase, do confirm all the licencing with the Symantec Licencing Department which is the final authority on licencing matters.

[dyasny]

Thanks, this makes things much clearer. So I guess I can't get the agent to do the deduplication on the fly and then pull the data out by the server, I still have to have a local backup done first. I wonder what the budgetting dept will have to say about that :)

[pkh]

You can use client-side dedup which does the dedup at the remote location, i.e. you do not need CASO or another media server at the remote location.  This will reduce the bandwidth requirement a bit, but the link quality will still determine whether the backup will be successful or not.