Remote Backups?

Rudeboy

Rudeboy

Rudeboy

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Any of you guys running remote backups?

I've been tasked with centralising backups from our European offices to the main office in the UK and am looking for some ideas.

Our sites consist of NetApp Filers and Windows, Solaris and Linux Application/Infrastructure servers.

So far I've been looking at SnapVault and Nearstore/Nearstore on FAS due to the existing amount of NetApp exquipment we have as well as options like Puredisk with a VTL backend (Sepaton etc) or a Quantum DXi series setup.

Bandwidth usage must be limited also due to some sites only having 2Mb links, therefore WAN Acceleration/data-deduplication are a must.

I've got appointments to see a few vendors for demos, but am looking for ideas as to what else is available in this space or what other people are using for their setups?

I have a fairly large budget to play with :D

Thanks.
 
Just finished implementing eVault for all remote backups at a large client. Works really well after the initial seed. All data gets piped to a new eva.

Bonus is, we're never pestered for restores anymore as the Helpdesk have rights to restore user files - definite win!
 
I have been investigation archiving for a client rather than backups.

They still want access to the data on a number of sites.

However budget is limited.

The main problem I see is the bandwidth as the site are not big enough and only have ADSL.

They could be uploading 30-100GB at a go!!
 
2mb? Ouch, I hope you're small!

Check out the EMC disk library range - Network attached, backup to disk and de-dup. The replicate this over to the UK where you can pass off to tape. Then there's also Avamar.

Also, be careful if you are in a heavily regulated or compliant industry. often if you backup data to another country that country has to obide by the laws the data came from.
 
Been to a vendor today for a demo and while it looked quite neat, all it was doing was replacing the physical tape library on the end of the backup system with a mini VTL that then de-duped and replicated itself to a master server elsewhere.
I was hoping to replace my entire backup infrastructure and rip out the backup servers, but it seems they still need them, so I won't gain any saving at all as I'll need to maintain 90% of my current environment (backup server, support contract, backup licences etc).

Back to the drawing board I guess :(
 
Jas1975 said:
Just finished implementing eVault for all remote backups at a large client. Works really well after the initial seed. All data gets piped to a new eva.

Bonus is, we're never pestered for restores anymore as the Helpdesk have rights to restore user files - definite win!
Click to expand...

Use eVault here - fantastically good (for about 12-18 months now)

We also have live replication for DR purposes
 
Jas1975 said:
Just finished implementing eVault for all remote backups at a large client. Works really well after the initial seed. All data gets piped to a new eva.

Bonus is, we're never pestered for restores anymore as the Helpdesk have rights to restore user files - definite win!
Click to expand...

I've had a good look at eVault and have a rep coming out to see me tomorrow. Looks pretty good by all accounts. Be interesting to see how it compares technology wise and cost wise to the solutions I've seen on NetApp, Puredisk, Quantum etc.

Don't suppose anyone has a rough idea on cost/GB for their managed online service? Couldn't see anything mentioned anywhere on their website.
 
Sorry for hijacking, I didn't see the need to post a new thread.

I'm in a similar boat and am going to be soon looking at centralised backups of Microsoft services. All data at remote sites to be backed up will mainly be file server data, no SQL databases or Exchange.

What products do you guys use, or have knowledge of which goes to block level. I'm not going near any products which backs up in a flat file format, only software which transfers incremental file changes will do the job. I've numerous sites with all sorts of WAN links from 1mb SDSL upwards.

Any ideas?
 
There's plenty of file level stuff which does incremental. We provide online backup based on Asigra software, it's pretty good at transferring as little data as possible, particularly with file backups.

If you must do block level then you'll need to do something on the storage side, I know netapp do decent differential block level replication on their kit. In fact most storage vendors offer it, I just know Netapps works as advertised.
 
mr.bond said:
Are there any other vendors which you'd recommend?

I'd ideally like to benchmark and demo several solutions.
Click to expand...

Well, I know the market from the providers point of view only. A lot of people use Asigra to provide solutions, I suspect because of a lack of alternatives but they have a nice client list (Government, FTSE100 companies etc...)

eVault are mentioned in this thread and I don't know much about them but they sound worth a look.

There are plenty of providers obviously, but make sure you find out what software their using behind their branding.

The bottom line on Asigra I'd say is that it's efficient in terms of storage and transferring data but it's not the fastest, in lab scenarios I consistently fail to max out a Gig connection and it's not clear why, bottleneck isn't disk or processor or memory....I have to suspect the efficiency of their code.
 
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