WAN Backup with Symantec BackupExec

[sufina]

Hi everybody

i would like to realise a "cheap" wan backup for a small customer. the customer has already Backup Exec 2010 in production.
It's one site with a Backup Exec Server, a fileserver and a DB server with agents installed.

Now the customer has a second site with a vpn connection between. On both sides there is a NAS that is syncing with rsync on blocklevel.

my question is now... how can i backup with backup exec to the nas?
And what options do i have to set, for that the files "stay" almost the same, to reduce required bandwith over the wan?

The nas has also iscsi support. Maybe that could be usfull for a solution? Or may the BE Dedup Option could help?

Does it make sense to realise something like that at all? Or is there a general problem in this architecture.

thanks for your input.
Regards
Severin

[JoaoMatos]

hi Sufina, 

Yes, you can backup to the NAS, it's a simple backup to disk (B2D)

What you realy want to do?

What is your idea? Replicate info to other site?

Let us know more, operating systems...

Regards,

JoaoMatos

[CraigV]

Dedupe across a WAN needs a VERY good link...if it isn't fast enough, it will never work.

What I can suggest is backing up to your NAS on your production site first, and then creating a duplicate job to run that information across your WAN to the secondary site. Depending on how much data you're backing up, it might take a while with the speed of the line.

Dedupe MIGHT work, but you would need to consider client-side dedupe before sending that data across the WAN to the other NAS...if the NAS even supports it.

Failing that, incremental/differential backups will make your jobs subsequent to a Full backup a lot faster, allowing you to do a full backup over a weekend for instance.

[sufina]

Hi guys

thanks for the answers...

@JoaoMatos
Do i need a special license to do a backup to disc to the nas?

@CraigV
The link quality is good... but only 8Mbit/s.
I want to Backup 300GB of files. Over the WAN i just want to transfer at least amount of data as possible.

I think a full backup on weekend is not a really good solution, because it would take a really long time to complete. (8Mbit/s = 3.6 GB per hour - 300GB = 83 hours)

since the nas'es are able to rsync on blocklevel. I think about doing a backup to the nas and then rsync to the other site.

But for that, it is important that the bkf files stay almost unchanged. How do i have to configure the backup jobs to do that? Is this possible at all?

thanxs for the help.

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

...you can run a duplicate job straight after your initial job finishes.

So...

1. Run backup job to your primary site's NAS.

2. Run a duplicate job to the same NAS in a different folder.

3. do an rsynch from your primary site's NAS to the other site's NAS...this at least takes care of running backups across the WAN, and it leaves your initial backup untouched. Your duplicate job's data can be deleted sometime during the week.

[CraigV]

Hi sufina,

Did you come right here?