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Dramatically improve Symantec's 'Continuous Protection Service' network utilisation when transfering data to a 'Backup Destination'

Updated: 02 Sep 2009 | 2 comments
ajl119's picture
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Hello,

There is a performance shortcoming in how Symantec Continuous Protection Service replicates data to its backup destinations.

The purpose of Symantec Continuous Protection Service is to replicate local data repositories to remote data repositories located in contingency locations for disaster recovery etc.
The vast majority of customers running Symantec Continuous Protection Service will not have leased lines between their main buildings and their DR sites however due to the huge costs of leased lines. Even frame relay or MPLS circuit connections can be expensive when buying high CIR rates.

This is a time old problem for all business (cost) and so many are moving towards IPSec VPN technologies on cheap DSL lines for private connections, which can be realized in-house on existing infrastructure.
The down side of DSL services is that they are comparably slow when compared to a leased line for example.
If you are using Symantec Continuous Protection Service to replicate your company business data (like most everyone) you will probably need to replicate large amounts of data, over a tiny DSL link...

A very common solution; aggregate many cheap DSL links together.

This is becoming very common practice as it is very cheap to purchase firewall/s with multiple Internet connections and which can perform per-connection load balancing of data.
This has some challenges however;
It is not possible to 'bond' VPNs together to create a single high-bandwidth data path. You could perform per-packet load balancing across all your WAN links (each WAN link with a VPN to the desired destination etc), however this would cause all sorts of problems let alone terrible packet reordering issues.

So, you have multiple low bandwidth links which work great and everyone is really happy with the new speeds (a result of the reduced contention), BUT, your Symantec Continuous Protection Service data is still not keeping up with changes on the live site! Why not?

The reason why not, is because Symantec Continuous Protection Service only creates a single TCP session to each of its 'Backup Destinations'. This single session can only reside on a single WAN link thus no bandwidth gains are seen :o(

The complete solution; Symantec need to enhance the Continuous Protection Service product such that multiple TCP sessions are created to each 'Backup Destination' and not just a single session.

This would mean that for every additional TCP session created, the new session will be routed via the next WAN link until all the WAN links have sessions. This results in Continuous Protection Service getting access to an overall bandwidth figure equal to the sum of all the links :o)

This could also provide general performance benefits through multi-threading, even if there is only a single WAN link!
I.e. each TCP session could be 'managed' by its own CPU thread thus allowing for potentially better transaction pipe-lining and much better use of servers with multiple cores...

All in all, to add the ability to have multiple TCP sessions would provide benefits to all user groups especially those with multiple cheap WAN links.

So come on Symantec, what do you say?
Cheers, Andy.

Comments

teiva-boy's picture
30
Aug
2009
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 BE wasn't designed for

 BE wasn't designed for backing up over a WAN.  I doubt you will see improvements in this.  Good luck though.

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."

ajl119's picture
02
Sep
2009
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correction

Hello,

I am really very sorry. Just noticed my rather big mistake.

'Backup Exec' and 'Continuous Protection Service' are different products...!

My entire post is referring to running 'Continuous Protection Service' over WAN links and not Backup Exec.

The 'Continuous Protection Service' product is designed for WAN links and therefore a request to support this suggestion is valid.

Sorry for the confusion.