minimum hardware requirements for mediaserver with msdp

[prudhviraj]

Hi All,

We are looking to install a mediaserver with msdp (local disk) on our remote site.We dont have more than 6 servers in the remote site.We also want to replicate data from remote site to main datacenter.

In the netbackup documentation i saw that we need 8vcpu and 16gb ram until 32tb of data backing up.

But can anyone help me what are minimum harware requirements(no of vcpu's and ram) if i have to backup 2tb of data with msdp and auto image replication

[sdo]

A minimum spec is a very difficult question to answer without detailed knowledge of your infrastructure, your networks, your backup frequencies, your data retentions, your data topology, your data dedupe-ness.  Veritas themselves will never suggest or hint at anything less than the documented minimums.  All anyone else could ever suggest is perhaps to start with the documented minimum and work downwards until it starts failing.

If you must have a suggestion, then use this at your own risk...

One rule of thumb might be 1GB of RAM for each 1TB of dedupe disk space used, so, one could say you need 2GB for OS, plus 2GB for NetBackup Media Server and MSDP application services (or 3GB for a Master/Media and MSDP), plus another 2GB for the MSDP dedupe fingerprint tables.  vCPUS, surely it has to be an absolute minimum of four, and I suggest that because my small demos/labs don't run very well with only two vCPUs.  As for disk space, 50GB for Windows OS (or 20GB for Linux OS), plus 20 GB for NetBackup application and minimal logging, plus 10GB for MSDP database volume, plus I would suggest 4TB of disk space for the MSDP dedupe pool.

As for networking... latency on long distance WAN links may very well catch you out.  Veritas NetBackup Appliances have built in WAN accelerators.  Whereas your own build Media Server, or Master/Media Server will not have this feature.

[davidmoline · Accepted solution]

Since you talk about vCPU, I'm guessing that you are putting this media server into a virtual environment. In which case at a bare minimum you would start with 4 vCPU and 8GB RAM (this is what Veritas recommends as a starting point for their remote office virtual appliance).

The amount of storage for MSDP really depends on the source data and on how long you want to retain the data on the remote site (keeping 1 month of backups locally will vastly improve your restore repsonse - you want to avoid having to restore data from the central site if possible). Given 2TB of source data and assuming a general deduplication rates, you could probably get away with a4TB MSDP storage disk. 

Montior the performance of the server and add more CPU and RAM as and if required. 

As for replicating/duplicating back to a central office - look at the seeding the backup in the central repositiory to reduce the time and amount of data required to be sent across the wire. 

[prudhviraj]

Thank you david and sdo,

We are going with 4vcpu and 8 GB RAM with 4TB for msdp disk.

I will also check into seeding that is suggested for AIR.