Symantec 2010 Backup Exec Media

[MTomasco]

We are backing up files from 4 different domain controllers and network files over a network everynight to an external hard drive. The bandwidth is no more than a T1 connection. Would it be more wise to station an external hard drive in each of the 4 different office locations so the domain controllers can simply backup locally to the hard drive? The copying rate seems to be only 2/3 MB per minute, and is taking an awful amount of time backing up 1-2 GB of data per domain controller each night.

[AmolB]

The data will flow from the client to the media server and then to the destination device. So even if you

create a B2D on the client itself still data will flow from Client->Media Server->B2D on client. The speed

will be still slow.

[sksujeet]

Yes you can do that but you have to install BE on the 4 different sites in that case. Because the data flows from the clients to BE server and then to the tape drives.

If you have 4 different offices and 4 different location it is recommended to have the BE at all 4 different offices as the data transfer over the wan will kill the speed.In our environment we have BE for different locations unless they are connected by the ethernet.

[MTomasco]

Thanks sazz. Yes, we have BE installed on 1 server, and then the remote agent installed on 4 or 5 different machines. So, how does installing BE at the 4 different locations help with the speed over the WAN?

[AmolB]

Well if you install BE at each location then WAN will not come in picture.

You can directly attach 1 devcie to each Media server at each location and run backups locally.

[MTomasco]

If we are using one specific external HD in a different location, and I do go the route of installing BE on the 4 different servers, will that still speed the process?

[AmolB]

If you are installing BE at each site then you need a HD at each site

[CraigV]

...the other option, which might be expensive is to consider using deduplication, especially client-side. So you run a backup job from your central server, it dedupes the data on each remote server before sending it across the WAN.

It shouldn't be that much data that you transfer after your first original backup...