Upgrading to Deduplication

[schraids]

I have been running BE 2014 for a couple months now on an offsite server connected via Fiber.  All the data is being saved on the local RAID, so space is limited.  We just recently decided to upgrade to the Deduplication option to help keep backup size down.  My problem is, I'm not able to find any way to convert the disk I already have setup to Dedupe.  Am I going to have to remove all the current data, then set it up as dedupe, and start all over, or is there an option somewhere to do this?

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

Hi,

No...a normal B2D can't be upgraded to a dedupe folder. Unless there was enough disk space available in order to create the dedupe folder initially, and if you don't have additional disks to create a new dedupe folder, you'd have to move the data from the B2D off to another location and reconfigure it as a dedupe folder.

Then you'd either start your backups again from scratch and keep the data from the B2D until it is expired, or look at duplicating that data onto the dedupe store.

Thanks!

[schraids]

Thats what I was afraid of...  I have an external 5TB drive that should hold all the data currently backed up on the server, whats the best way to transfer this data to the external?  Should I just move it using Windows Explorer, or is there an option in BE that would work better?

[CraigV]

No, never copy via Windows. Create a duplicate job that duplicates the backup set from your B2D to the external...once you have verified that all is done correctly, THEN look at reconfiguring the original disk as a dedupe folder.

Doing a manual copy messes u the catalogs and might actually render your restores useless unless done through BE.

Thanks!

[schraids]

When you say "Create a duplicate job that duplicates the backup set" do you mean do a backup of my entire backup server to the external drive, or is there an option for a "duplicate job" somewhere?  I've looked around, and didnt see anything like that in BE?

[pkh · Accepted solution]

What you need to do is the following:-

1) Get another disk and define your dedup folder on it.  Dedicate the entire volume to your dedup folder.

2) Go to the Storage tab.  Click on your existing disk storage and select backup sets.

3) Select all or some of the backup sets, right-click and select duplicate.  You then target your duplicate job to the new dedup folder.

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

...the TN below is for BE 2012 but the steps should be the same for BE 2014...post back if not:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH187265

I wouldn't put your dedupe folder onto an external drive as you're almost guaranteed not to have adequste throughput.

Thanks!

[schraids]

I checked the instructions provided by CraigV, and they do appear to work, however creating a new job for each one of my backups did not appear to be the best method.  Instead, I followed the steps provided by "pkh" but did not make it a dedupe drive as suggested by "CraigV".  This seems to have accomplished what I needed, after several days of running...  My plan is now to Expire all data on the server RAID, delete the drive from BE, fromat it, then add it back as a Dedupe drive.  Finally I will adjust the schedule to start backups from scratch, and put the external drive in safe storage.

[pkh]

You can click on the disk storage in the Storage tab, disable it and then right-click and delete it.  This will also delete all the backup sets in the disk storage.

[schraids]

Thank you guys for all your help on this, I have successfully converted to a dedupe disk, with all my previous backups being stored safely on an external HDD.  Hopefully others will find this post useful as well.