Best way for offsite backup with internet drop every 24h

[anbeca]

Hi everybody,

we want to do an offsite backup. The internet connection on one site drops every 24 hours. Every time B&R decides to do a full backup the backup fails because it takes longer then 24 hours.
As I read v7 has a solution for this. Is this right? And how to I set it up?

Thank you
Carsten Kraemer

[Gostev]

Hi, just use v7 backup copy job to take your backups offsite. Thanks!

[anbeca]

Hi

that answer was fast. Thank you.
Is it necessary to use the WAN Accelerator or is this just optional?

[dellock6]

WAN accelaration is an additional options for a backup copy job, so is not mandatory. It surely helps if you have limited bandwidth between the two sites, and reading around in the forums, up to around 100 mbits line speed it is really effective. So, if you are in this situation, consider using it.

Luca.

[Gostev]

Is it necessary to use the WAN Accelerator or is this just optional?

If you are asking about "resume" functionality, than no - WAN Accelerators are not required, as Backup Copy jobs are able to resume data transfer in case of network outage in both direct and WAN accelerated modes.

WAN Accelerators are for when you are lacking bandwidth to copy all required backups offsite (or are not meeting your offsite RPO due to the same issue).

[anbeca]

Hi there,

I just tried it out and it does not act the way I was thinking.
I created a backup copy job and then after a while I restarted the firewall to test a connection drop.
Then the log says: 15.09.2013 23:20:30 :: Processing 'SQL Server' Error: The RPC-Server is not available
RPC function call failed. Function name: [InvokerTestConnection]. Target machine: [192.168.49.86].
15.09.2013 23:22:16 :: All VMs have been queued for processing
15.09.2013 23:22:16 :: Waiting for copy interval expiration

What do I do now to "resume" the job?

[Gostev]

You don't need to do anything. The processing will be retried after timeout and once backup infrastructure resources become available, at which point the transfer will be resumed. Direct transfer mode is implemented this way because it is primarily intended for local backup copies, where network connection drop is unexpected, which is why the job will report every issue.

WAN Accelerators based transfer mode, on the other hand, is designed to work with Backup Copy jobs going over WAN links, which are typically not reliable. Connection drop is pretty "normal" there, so resume is completely transparent in case of reasonable network downtime. Meaning that WAN accelerators will keep trying to reconnect to each other to resume the transfer, and will only inform you about the issue if reconnect fails during some extended time (10 minutes I believe). We still want to inform you about longer network downtime, as it may potentially start affecting your ability to meet your offsite RPO, or finish the Backup Copy job within allowed network transfer window.

[aeccles]

You don't need to do anything. The processing will be retried after timeout and once backup infrastructure resources become available, at which point the transfer will be resumed.

How long is the timeout set to? I had a VPN that was down for a couple of days and noticed that my backup copy jobs have been "waiting for copy interval expiration" for 100 hours now. I assumed the copy interval expiration was the same as the "copy every" setting within the copy job. I have that set to 1 day, so that doesn't appear to be it. Can we set this somewhere the interval expiration timeframe somewhere else?

Thanks

[veremin]

Synchronization interval refers to "Copy Every" setting, indeed. With 1 day value, the synchronization interval will expire on the next day. Can this be a reason why the waiting process hasn't been stopped immediately in your case? Thanks.

[aeccles]

I must be missing something.

If it starts at 11am with a 1 day value, I would expect that the "waiting for copy interval expiration" could never be longer than 23:59 ?

[veremin]

With 1 day value the synchronization interval that starts at 11 am will expire on the next day at 11 am. Thanks.