BE2010 Synthetic and SAN based backup at same time?
Created: 22 Aug 2011 | 3 comments
Hello,
We have just purchased our BE2010 licenses and are looking towards moving to implement this. We would like to utilise the SAN level backups as these appear to have advantages in lowering the load on the ESX server and I assume they are faster? We would also like to implement a Synthetic backup regime but are wondering if this is supported?
De-Dup..... We have a DataDomain device, I assume for the ESX/VMWare backups that Source Side De-Dup wont work? But, can Source Side De-dup run with Synthetic backups? I ask as normally for full 'normal' backups we use an OST connection to the DD but for Synthetic we need to configure a VTL on the DataDomain.
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Synthetic Backups to
Synthetic Backups to Deduplication folder are not supported.
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH154067
In order to use the Synthetic feature, a Backup-to-Disk folder must be the target of the synthetic job.
Not sure about the Data
Not sure about the Data Domain aspect of your request - but AVVI Agent backups run in Differential or Incremental mode with GRT enabled give a kind of 'synthetic' backup in that the restore selections will show you all of the file names in the differential or incremental set as if they had been a full.
Also the complete VM restore (non-GRT) recovers the full and Incr/Diff at the time of the backup for you to the state of the system at teh point of the incremental or differentuial backup.
As such the synthetic concept does not really apply to AVVI as the agent kind of does that for you and you can then use the VMware SAN Transport Mode and use a DeDuplication Storage Folder.
That said you cannot do client side dedup as the client responsible for doing AVVI is the one running on the media server itself (we only use the client inside an individual VM for gathering GRT catalogs and for restores)
Vmware SAN based AVVI backups
Vmware SAN based AVVI backups are faster in 95% of cases. And the preferred method to do so.
If doing so, your backup target would be either a B2D foler using a CIFS share off the DataDomain, or you are using OST and EMC's new BOOST functionality which is pretty sweet in improving ingest performance of the DD appliance, and replication controlled via backup policies in Backup Exec.
Synthetics ONLY work for file system backups, and not for anything else. They do not require the VTL license from EMC/DD. They can backup to disk, in fact require disk (Unlike NetBackup)
I do not recommend that feature as it's not scalable, choking on high file counts. Use OST and BOOST, or move to a better more robust enterprise backup product like Symantec netbackup or networker from EMC that also integrate with DD quite well.
Lastly, you can't dedupe an already deduped data stream. So no client-side dedupe should be enabled, if the backup target is DD.
There is an online portal, save yourself the long hold times. Create ticket online, then call in with ticket # in hand :-) http://mysupport.symantec.com "We backup data to restore, we don't backup data just to back it up."
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