Offsite backup copy file size

[omg]

We have started virtualizing servers . Using esxi 5.5

One host has around 7 VMs. We do a full Host backup using Veeam.
When we do forward incremental backups using Veeam, the changed files are around 15GB . If we are planning to copy the backup files to offsite location , are we supposed to copy the 15GB file every day ?

That would be a lot for our internet bandwidth ( 100 Mb download / 20 Mb upload).

1) Just wondering what backup file size does SMB ( 50 users) have in your environments ?

2) Do you transfer the backup incremental file every day to offsite location ?

3) How long does the transfer take in your location ?

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Any other suggestions are appreciated.

[Gostev]

1. It will be dramatically different from customer to customer, primarily depending on the workload running in those VM, and how much changes to those applications make to the virtual disks. Typically, database and mail servers produce a lot of daily changes, while the rest of the workloads are fairly "quiet".

2. Most customers try to do that yes, at least for most critical VMs.

3. Depends on upload internet bandwidth, change rate (see 1), and whether or not you are using Built-in WAN Acceleration. For example, in your case with 15GB daily changes, I would expact no more than 3 GB of daily traffic (worst case scenario) if you use our built-in WAN acceleration. So, even if you throttle Veeam to only use 50% of your upload, the entire offsite backup should take only about 1 hour.

[omg]

Gostev,

The last answer what you gave:

I would expact no more than 3 GB of daily traffic (worst case scenario)

What exactly does it mean ? Even though we have 15GB file changes every day in our backup, when we use Veeam WAN accelerator in enterprise edition Plus , it will only use 3GB of file transfer ?

[Gostev]

Correct. 3GB or even less, depending on the workload running in your VMs.

[omg]

Gostev,

Correct me if I'm wrong:

Backup file size is 15GB ( from Veeam backup forward incremental).

If we transfer that 15GB file using some other 3rd party software, then entire 15GB of internet bandwidth will be used.
If we transfer that 15GB file using Veeam EP wan-builtin accelerator,then only 3GB of internet bandwidth will be used.

[veremin]

Correct me if I'm wrong:

Correct.

[omg]

Does Veeam EP wan accelerator compresses the 15GB file and transfer it so it can use less internet bandwidth ?

[veremin]

The data reduction happens due to global cache mechanism. Thanks.

[omg]

Does Veeam follow "Global Data Deduplication" even for local target backups ?

I mean for WAN targets it is checking all the factors and trying to send minimum data out
to cut down the bandwidth and data.

Does Veeam follow the same rule when we do a regular forward incremental backups to a local USB backup disk ? without doing any offsite backups

[veremin]

WAN Accelerators are not available for ordinary backup jobs. This functionality can be only used either for replication or backup copy job. Thanks.

[omg]

When setting up WAN accelerators for both onsite and offsite backups, the v8 software does ask for "Global cache" size location.

1) Does the disk size of the global cache location have impact on data transfer from onsite to offsite location, I mean if we give 100GB on local 5200 rpm disk
versus 1TB on SSD drive, will the backup transfer will be faster ? if yes lot faster or only 5-10% faster ?

2) Does the same thing apply to offsite location as well ? If we have huge SSD 1TB at offsite location for Global Cache location, will the backups be pulled fast from onsite location ?

[foggy]

Not the cache size, but the speed of the underlying disks is the key factor, since WAN accelerator is effectively trading disk I/O for WAN bandwidth savings.