Best practice for Full backups over DSL WAN (DeDupe)

Hello Michael!

Thank you for your question and for finding time to open the thread regarding it!

Deduplication may save your space, but it is a resource-intensive process, so I would suggest you to take a look at this article before making a decision.

In your case I would suggest you to create incremental backups: they just register the changes made since the last full/incremental backup and are much smaller than full backup.

Should you decide to use deduplication I would like to share some advice with you. It's better to consider the following recommendations in order to use this tool efficiently.

Setting up a machine for Acronis Storage Node

• Prepare a dedicated machine for Acronis Storage Node hosting deduplication vaults. Server operating system is preferred;
• Multi-core machines are highly recommended;
• Acronis Storage Node computer should have at least 2 GB of available physical memory for deduplication to function flawlessly.

Setting up a centralized managed vault with deduplication

• Vault data and vault database folders should reside on different HDDs to avoid performance degradation;
• If vault data is stored on a NAS, make network connection as fast as possible. Gigabit Ethernet is recommended;
• If vault data is stored on locally attached HDDs, use the fastest controllers and high RPM drives. I/O is the main bottleneck for deduplication speed;
• Having one deduplication vault per Acronis Storage Node is the best practice;
• Make sure there is plenty of free space on the deduplication vault storage. You can estimate the recommended free space being equal to 110% of occupied space. For example, if the vault data occupies 10 GB, you should have 11 GB of free space.

Settings for client machines and backup plans/policies

• Speed of backup to deduplicated vault can be increased by turning off deduplication at source (enable Deduplicate backup only after transferring it to the vault (do not deduplicate at source) option in Additional Settings of Backup options;
• Client machines should be on fast Ethernet connection (Gigabit Ethernet is recommended);
• Performance degradation starts to occur when deduplication database is larger than 20 GB. It is thus recommended to limit the number of client machines to 10-20 per deduplication vault.

Setting up scheduled tasks to the deduplication vault

• The indexing task can process only 20 GB of unique data per hour or 500 GB per day. So, please plan the scheduled tasks accordingly: if overall data stream during the backup will be more than 500 GB per day, such backup tasks will fail. In this case it is necessary to change the schedule, i.e. set the scheduled tasks to start every 3 or 4 days instead of everyday backups.

Should you need anything else or have any further questions - feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience, we will be happy to help you!

Thank you!

Hi,

The backup's will be for 3 core servers, approx 300gb of raw data. We wish to do a daily backup to a NAS box and then replicate this offsite, however I fear that the backup file sizes may be too large for a standard WAN connection to take so was wishing to run deduplication across the 3 servers, resources isn't too much of an issue as all 3 machines are quad cpu, 8gb+ of RAM and SAS RAID5 yet they only serve 20 people in a small network ..

So in short I need to backup 3 servers to a NAS and then replicate offsite, power/resource isn't an issue ... Ive been doing a FULL backup with Incremental followings as the file sizes went UP when using de-dupe??

Mike