Backup remote server(s) when bandwidth is limited

[Thomas_Anthony]

Hello,

We're looking for suggestions on how to efficently backup large multi-TB remote clients over a network with limited bandwidth.

•   Are there any non-hardware NBU client backup methods to either de-dup, compress, backup only changed blocks, use a possible Puredisk option, or otherwise limit data transfer ?

•   Are there any low cost hardware options that could be installed on the remote side to stage backup for dedup ?

•   Not sure if this would gain anything, but would it help to setup a remote Master and/or media server and send the data to the local storage using an SLP ?

Anyway, as always, thanks for all your help !

The local environment:

NBU 7.6.0.2 on Red Hat 4.1.2-54 Master/Media servers writing to Data Domain disks (DDos  5.4.1.1)

The remote clients:

NBU 7.6.0.2 on Windows and Linux

[RiaanBadenhorst · Accepted solution]

Hi Thomas,

It comes down to budget and the recovery SLA. If you've got enough budget you can deploy a Master in those sites and back them up to, a small DD, a small appliance, or maybe a small MSDP. This would however cost quite a bit as you would need hardware. You can backup (and restore) locally and you can replicate to another central site. Having a master here means it can run independently of the other site. Network comms issues do not impact backups/restores.

If the cost of deploying such a solution is too high then you're stuck with deploying just a client there, and backing it up across the WAN. This will work OK with dedupe, but restores are a problem (especially large restores), and it will take a while to handle the seeding (initial backups).