Full Backup over inconsistent VPN

[William_Reigle]

I am trying to backup a remote server over our VPN connection. We have a T1 at this end and a DSL line at the other office. The connection is inconsistent and will often time-out. Is it possible to perform a backup over this type of connection or does it require a consistent connection?


-Thank You

[Joshua_Small]

I doubt you will get an official answer, but I would suggest you really don't want to do this.

What is the purpose of moving offsite.. is it purely so you have off-site backup?

If so, you are much better off taking a tape offsite every night.

Is it so another office has access to the data? You would be better looking at Veritas Replication service or something like that.

If nothing else, moving data over a VPN will be incredibly slow, and if you perform a complete backup on a few GB of data it will take all night to move it.

[Sharvari_Deshmu]

Hello,

We would like to inform you that BE spped over VPN can be slow.

Please verify whether the Be job is failing over a particular resource if yes then you can move it as the last resource to be backed up or create a new selection list for that resuorce and then verify.

Thanks,

NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked assumed answered and would be moved to answered questions pool.

[William_Reigle]

Thank you for your replies. We do realize that it is slow, the full backup has worked on occasion, taking 12 hours. This is fine, the computers are doing little at night on friday night. We forgot to mention that a 1GB differential runs perfectly fine everyday (with about 10% failure - acceptable to us).

We are pursuing this because we were told it would work. The speed is not an issue, the connection is an issue. We were informed that BE could continue even if the connection dropped a packet once in a while (we are typically at 2% loss).

It would be great to back up our remote locations via VPN as the management of tapes is an absurdity for multiple locations as compared to a single source.

Our next option indeed is a replication utility. It just seems that there is no reason for the backup over VPN not to work. Any more thoughts or experience is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

William

[William_Reigle]

Sorry, we forgot to address some specific questions:

1. We have a main office and sattelite offices. We want to have a single, central backup. We no longer use tapes as a backup media - we now very, very happily backup to disk.

2. We do not feel it fails on a specific resource. This is because it fails at a different point in the backup each time. It does fail on the second drive always but feel that is only because the first drive/resource is so small there is not an opportunity for the connection issue to be a problem during its backup period.

[A_van_der_Boom]

I don't know if you have the possibility to reserve some bandwidth for your VPN connection, this might help keeping you VPN connection more stable.

Regards
A van der Boom

[Amruta_Purandar]

Hello,

We hope the above response helps. if the problem persists, do revert.


Additional Information :
For information on the recent VERITAS Backup Exec security vulnerabilities, including links to the downloads for the necessary hotfixes, please refer to the following document:
Patch summary for Security Advisories VX05-001, VX05-002, VX05-003, VX05-005, VX05-006, VX05-007

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/277429.htm

NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked assumed answered and would be moved to answered questions pool.

[William_Reigle]

Thank you for your repsonses. We do not have the ability to reserve bandwidth, however we are aware that a t1 on the other end would probably clear this up. Thanks for your response though A vd B! Appreciated.

As far as the responses from Veritas support goes - not all that helpful.

Response 1: Even if it was failing on a resource, moving that to the end would solve nothing as all resources need to be backed up!

Response 2: Was that a response? What does "revert" mean as related to this thread?

Our question was a specific technological question regarding the functioning of the BE software! Veritas, please re-read initial post. CAN THE PROGRAM MANAGE DROPPED PACKETS? Period.

[Renuka_-]

Hello William,

To answer your question: If the VPN connection has time out problems frequently and if the size of packets lost is large, the backups or restores may fail with errors like "Network connection failed" or "connection to remote agent lost".

Replication Exec can be good option for you, here are some details:

Replication Exec replicates data between systems in a network, automatically synchronizing data to maintain up-to-the-minute replicas of all or portions of your computers' NT file systems.

It replicates all types of files in the NTFS and FAT file systems, including databases and open files. It can replicate data changes in real-time, or synchronize changed files at scheduled intervals.
Because Replication Exec always replicates only changed data, it minimizes bandwidth utilization on the LAN or across a WAN, while maintaining up-tothe- minute copies of your data. Also, you can limit how much network bandwidth Replication Exec uses for replicating your data.


Additional Information :
For information on the recent VERITAS Backup Exec security vulnerabilities, including links to the downloads for the necessary hotfixes, please refer to the following document:
Patch summary for Security Advisories VX05-001, VX05-002, VX05-003, VX05-005, VX05-006, VX05-007

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/277429.htm

NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked assumed answeredand would be moved toanswered questions pool.

[William_Reigle]

Thank you for all your responses.

We paid for support on this issue. Whether this will work is in fact dependent on the line's (VPN) consistency. If the Remote Host response time is too long at any point during the job, the BE engine will reach a time out and therefore assume the connection is lost. Even slow VPN's (within reason say 768/768) will work as long as the speed is somewhat consistent. If the speed drops below a certain point, BE will time out on one of its responses from the Remote Host. We have tried this over a different (more reliable) connection and it works - even when slow (6MB/Min on a 768/768 line). However our other VPN's speed is erratic and will not work. We will work on the line quality.