Seeding an initial deduplication client backup with non-MSDP backup

[MortenSeeberg]

I have used this procedure several times: https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH144437.html
but always only as it was intended, using existing backups in the MSDP to seed new clients to the same MSDP.

So now I have a client with some large remote file servers which I want to pre-seed the central MSDP with before we attempt a client-side-dedupe backup over the WAN link.

I was thinking that theoretically I could dump the clients backup to BasicDisk/NAS at the remote site, have them ship it in to the central site, import the backup, and duplicate it to the MSDP, and use it for seeding. Before I spend time testing it, I wanted to know if anyone tried this or have a better idea?

[RiaanBadenhorst · Accepted solution]

Hi Morten,

Yes that works fine, did it 2 weeks ago.

• Backup to Basic Disk (USB) at remote site (make sure you mount it as a folder / drive you can create again after you're removed it in order to clean up)
• Run the backup
• Move the disk to other site
• Create an empty folder matching the remote storage unit and expire the backups
• Import the backups by attaching to central media server
• Duplicate the backup to MSDP
• Then run your dedupe job either directly or as a duplication to the central MSDP.

[MortenSeeberg]

Great, and you used the seeding procedure on that client afterwards and got a high cache hit right away?

[RiaanBadenhorst]

No need to peform the seeding trick as you'll have the actual client's data in MSDP and listed under that specific client.

[MortenSeeberg]

True, same thing came to mind after posted my reply :)