Cloud Based Backups (Real World Solutions)

[Kev_Lamb]

Hi,

I currently have the following NBU setup in my environment:

RHEL 5.10 Master Server running NBU7.6.0.2

2x RHEL 5.10 Media Servers running NBU7.6.0.2

HP B6200 StoreOnce D2D system running catalysts which duplicate to a second B6200 offsite.

The media servers are running bonded 10Gb NIC's and the Master is running bonded 1Gb NIC with 4Gb F/C connect to the D2D

Our weekly full backup is approx 40Tb which has a 30day retention and the incrementals run to about 7Tb and are kept for 7 days.

The company are now talking about cloud backups and whilst I have had several vendors claiming that they can do miracles I want to hear from anyone with real world experience of moving over to cloud.

The initial seeding will obviously be the main issue as we only have a 1Gb connection to the Internet.

At present all our deduplication is taken care of via the B6200 and we are getting between 10-15:1 dedupe on the backups, the backups are all flat file backups, no database agents etc. the majority of the Wintel estate is on VM now and I cover these using VIP's with NBU.

As I say I am after any suggestions/pit falls etc from people who have actually moved to cloud rather than suppliers with glossy powerpoints :)

Kev

[RiaanBadenhorst]

I don't think cloud is a viable option for any enterprise. Its all well and great to put all your data in some data center somewhere in the sky but as you say, how long will seeding take, and once that is done, what happens when you need to restore your 5TB oracle database that runs your company. Do we all go on leave and come back in 2 weeks when its done?
 

It might be ok as a DR option, but then you still need to be able to restore it in the cloud to some standby kit, and get your company, and its staff access to it.

[Nicolai]

I agree with Riaan.

Also remember that the ISP's per default doesn't guarantee a specific bandwidth to one specific destination. ISP also charges for international traffic. So either a private connection is required or peering agreement using VPN. Both cost that need to be taken into equation

[mph999]

And, for example like in the case of Nivanix , you're stuffed if the cloud 'floats away' ...

[Kev_Lamb]

Cheers, these were my concerns to be honest, after the debarcle with Nivarnix and the amount of blog entries on AWS losing customer data especially codespace.com who went under because of this.

I think this is just the buzz within our company at the moment where they want to shift whatever they can to cloud.

Kev

[maurijo]

"what happens when you need to restore your 5TB oracle database that runs your company. Do we all go on leave and come back in 2 weeks when its done?"

Well I mostly value what you say on this forum Riaan but on this you are looking a bit from one side only.
Cloud backup programs anticipated that problem long ago and some have a solution for this. It is possible to have 1 backup on site, usually the last full synthetic. So if your oracle database goes down it can be restored as fast as possible from local storage.

Some also offer offloading to tape and come on site for the restore.

Most cloud backups have insane dedup ratios and it won't have to download exactly 5TB.The dedup is global on the entire storage.

You are correct in some ways and I guess that not every company is fit for cloud backup.

I am not going to discuss names of cloud backup products since these are symantec forums and that feels just weird.

[Kev_Lamb]

Maurijo, in the examples you have described this would necesitate having hardware remaining on site to recover either from the last Synth or from tape, I think what our guys were looking at was a complete move to Cloud which IMO is a big no no based on our current SLA and infrastructure, I just have to get this message across to those making noises about the cloud.

Kev

[RiaanBadenhorst · Accepted solution]

The appliances talk to Amazon S3, but like you say, you still need one locally. What I'm trying to highlight that placing your data in the cloud is useless unless you can do something with it i.e restore it.
 

[maurijo]

Well you can move your entire infrastructure to cloud but that is not the same as cloud backup. And yes, most cloud backup products need hardware on site to backup and restore. You can see it as your agent, this agent collects data/makes the backups and sends it to the cloud. So restoring means that your data goes to the agent machine and from there to your target.