Deduplication Option mit VMWare

[Andreas_Storf]

Hallo,

ich plane die Symantec-Option als Alternative zur Data Recovery. Hierbei ist für mit besonders die schmalbandige Übertragung zwischen VM-Host und einem physischen Windows-Server mit Symantec-BE2012 (inkl. Bandlaufwerk) von Bedeutung. Insofern von mir die Frage, ob und wie die Symantec-Option hier komplette VMs mit der Dedubliaktion-Technik übertragen kann, oder ob sich diese Technik nur auf einzelne Gastsysteme (quasi als Inbound-Sicherung) beschränkt.

Vielen Grüsse und Dank für eine rasche Rückmeldung.

Andreas

[CraigV]

Hi Andreas,

BE's deduplication option (like every other vendor) is aimed at disk targets. During the backup the data is deduplicated and existing information is edited out before being committed to the dedupe folder. This makes your backups smaller, and faster after the initial backup.

However...in order to get your dedupe folder off to tape, the deduped data will automatically rehydrate to the existing size.

As an example, you backup 1TB of VMs to a dedupe folder and it ends up as 400GB in size. When you duplicate this information off to tape, it will essentially backup 1TB of data again, and take longer as the data needs to be reconstructed.

If you can live with this, then BE backing up to a dedupe folder on disk first before being duplicated to tape is what you're looking at.

Thanks!

[Andreas_Storf]

Hi Craig,

thanks for the comment. There's no problem to live with any amount of data (both machines). The question is the reduction of network load between the host and backup machine while backing up.

Thanks,

Andreas

[CraigV]

Well, you'd need 8GB RAM minimum to run the dedupe option.

You should check out the best practices below:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO74446

Can't say what impact you will have on your network though. Your media server crunches all the data, so make sure it is powerful enough, and your network and clients are all @ 1GB minimum.

[pkh]

If I understand your situation correctly, you have a VM host at Site A and a BE media server at Site B.  You want to minimise the bandwidth usage between Site A and Site B.

If my understanding is correct, using the dedup option may not help in this situation.  If your VM host is VMware, then it cannot run client-side dedup and the entire backup will have to go from Site A to Site B.  If your VM host is something like Server 2008 R2, then it can run client-side dedup which will reduce traffic a little bit, but there will still be a substantial amount of traffic between Site A and Site B.

The only way to minimise traffic between Site A and Site B is to use optimised duplication.  For this, you need to have another BE media server with the dedup option at Site A (with the VM host).  You do your backup with this server and then duplicate the deduped backup to the dedup folder at Site B.  In addition to the additional server at Site A, you would also need a CASO licence.