DeDuplication Setup

[bwhalon]

Hi Everyone,

I'm sure you don't want to hear my long saga but  I need to give you a short synopsis.  In the past 6 months I have lost two servers.  I felt that I was doing ggod backups.  I'm always preaching to our clients a "backup is only as good as the restore.  You need to test."  Well, I was so busy I let the testing go by the wayside.  There were alot of mistakes on the backup.  There was not much disk space so I had changed the overwrite period.  I thought it was 1 week and it was 1 hour.  We had data on a NAS and didn't realize it need a special client because of the embedded operating system.

I'm sure you get the idea.  Now I want to be over precautious.  I am trying to run two backups a System Recover and a Backup Exec.  We are backing up about 1 Tb.  The way I figure to keep one month of active backups I will need approixmately 1.5 Tb of disk space for each backup system--Backup Exec and System Recovery.  I have been taking the e-learning classes;and posting here regularly to learn all I can about the Symantec Backup systems.

On one of my post I asked about CPS; found out that was a bad idea.  Now I'm trying DeDuplication.  There are many things I don't understand

•  The Pure disk is that the same as PDDE?
•  I remembe seeing two things that puzzeled me:

1.  It is not suggested that Deduplication be installed on a Domain Controller.  Microsoft SBS is a DC and it is part of the installation.
2. There was something about the login for the Pure disk or PDDE login.  I can't find it again can you give me some information.

• A SAN with SAS drive (Promise Vtech 610).  How can I find out if this will work for DeDuplication?
• When I first installed Backup Exec for SBS 2010 it picked up on the Promise and actual wiped it as part of the install.  I needed to use it for part of my SR backup now I have removed it.  Do I need to reload Depulication again to prepare the disk.
• Everytime I try to install the DeDuplication file I get the attached error. 
• I have previously posted my log which I'm posting again (Sorry I don't have it on this system, If someone wants to see it I'll post it tomorrow.).  I'm trying to go through the log line by line to resolve some of the issues. 
• If I reformat the drive, reinstall the Deduplication.  Would that help or just cost me more time.

Any help I can get is really appeciated.  Thank you.

BW

[pkh]

The dedup engine is derived from PureDisk.

To check whether you device is suitable for the dedup folder.  Check the HCL below.  Those device which are suitable are clearly shown.

BE 2010|2010 R2|2010 R3 Hardware (HCL)

[bwhalon]

PKH,

It is not on the HCL.  We were lead to believe that the piece of equipment being a SAN with SAS drives would be acceptable.  When I looked at the other configuration, it seems comparable.  It is an Intel box.  Is there a way for me to test whether it will work? 

Or do you think at this time I would be better off just doing a Full backup and incrementals?  Judging from your answer above and the one that you had given me on another blog, I get the idea if it is not on the HCL list you would not even attempt to do the deduplication. 

Can you send me a link for PureDisk.  I would like to gain a better understanding of it.

Thank you,

bw

[pkh · Accepted solution]

I am not aware of any tests to determine whether a disk is suitable for use for dedup.  You can try to use it for your dedup folder, but you would probably have to trouble-shoot any problems on your own.  Open a support case and ask Symantec Tech Support.

[bwhalon]

Thank you, PKH

I appreciate your help.

[teiva-boy]

The only qualification for the dedupe storage AFAIK, is that it's some sort of local storage e.g. SCSI, SAS, FC, iSCSI.  Technically you could use USB or Firewire too, but that is not recommended for obvious technical reasons and limitations.  NAS targets are not supported.

For your small environment, Puredisk by itself is not for you.  It is an enterprise product, with an enterprise price tag, and a complexity level 20x more than Windows and BackupExec.  Perhaps scrap what you are doing, and purchase the new BackupExec appliance instead?  

Everything you need is in one box, including storage.  And now backups are on a separate disparate server away from production servers and data.