Compression Level recommendations

[ChrisJ83]

Hi all

Just a quick question what would you recommend we use for Compression Level's in our backup job options?

We currently backup 5 VM's from a server 2012 R2 Hyper-V host, 3 of the VM's are 2012 R2 and 2 are 2008. Only one of the server 2012 R2 VM's has data de-duplication enabled.

Veeam is running on server 2012 R2 and stores the initial backups on a de-duplication enabled drive.

We then run backup copy jobs which make a copy of the backup on none de-duplication enabled devices like a Synology SAN and USB disks.

With this in mind should I go for Dedupe-friendly as the initial storage is de-duplication enabled or not as subsequent devices are not de-dupe enabled devices?

Or do I choose Dedupe-friendly on the backup and then on the subsequent backup copy jobs do I choose Optimal/High/Extreme depending on the trade of between size and speed during testing the different options?

Any help/advice appreciated.

Cheers

[foggy]

Chris, typically it is recommended to do right the opposite to what you're doing: to have some short retention on a fast primary storage and then backup copy to a secondary (probably, deduplicated) backup storage for longer retention. Please check our ultimate VM backup architecture. Backing up directly to a deduplicated storage is not the best practice.

As for compression levels, then yes, for dedupe target, dedupe-friendly level is recommended, and you can select some higher level for the backup copy jobs, if you continue with your scenario.

[ChrisJ83]

Ah ok that makes sense so I should be using the SAN as the primary and then do a backup copy job to the de-duplicated storage on the Veeam server.

Do I just need to follow this guide to move my backups?

http://www.veeam.com/kb1729

I can then do various backup copy jobs to be tailored for either deduplaication or offsite.

Thanks for the advice

[Vitaliy S.]

Ah ok that makes sense so I should be using the SAN as the primary and then do a backup copy job to the de-duplicated storage on the Veeam server.

Yes, that's the preferred way.

Do I just need to follow this guide to move my backups?

http://www.veeam.com/kb1729

Correct.