Dedupe questions

[macpiano]

I finally have my new servers in place (4.5 TB on the D drives) and licensing for the dedupe option. I have set up a couple of test jobs. I am using 2 servers right now in the same subnet but will move one later to another building. I am having the central admin server do a job where it backs up a local 1.5 TB file server to the other server's dedupe folder. I am running that 1.5 TB job right now and it is about 25 % complete.

1. On this first job I am getting about a 25% savings. What happens on subsequent full dedupe backup jobs, will it use another 75% of the 1.5 TB or will it be kind of like incremental backups and not duplicate what is there from the first job?

2. If you want to wipe out the job in the dedupe drive how you do that? Do you tell it to erase?

3. Do you use the restore wizard to re-hydrate that data to tape?

4. As I set these jobs up if they are indeed doing incrementals even on a full backup should I be just full backing up every time?

5. Should I be using client side dedupe or media server dedupe?

thanks

Gary

[Kiran_Bandi]

1. Your next dedup job will backup much less data. Much better than incrementals as dedup happens at block level.

3. You can use duplicate jobs to copy the deduplicated data to tape.

5. Client side dedup will reduce the network traffic between your client and media server, but uses resources on the client to perform dedup. During media server dedup, data will be transferred over the network to media server and dedup will be performed there.

So, depending on your network and resources available on the client to perform dedup operations, you can decide whether to use client side dedup or media server dedup.

Regards..

[pkh]

2. Yes.  During the next housekeeping run, dedup will reclaim the space.

4. Yes.  You can do that, but incrementals would still be faster as only the changed files are backed up.