Health Check on Data Domain

[ferrus]

I sometimes read up on the best practices for deduplication, to see if anything changes for better performance - and I just noticed this at the end of kb1745:

Health Check
Health check reads all data from the last restore point and across the backup chain. When used with deduplication storages, this data is rehydrated from the storage which may cause slow process. It is recommended to enable health check on the primary backup job before data is transported by backup copy job to a deduplication storage.

I always thought each backup chain needed a distinct health check.
Does this mean that it is no longer needed/recommended - if a health check has been performed on the primary storage?

We use the 'Read the entire restore point from source backup' option at our primary site - so no health checks are required, but synthesise them over the WAN to our DR site; again - from best practice.
Can I reasonably disable the health checks on the DR site DD, and enable them on the parent Backup Job instead?

[HannesK]

Hello,
your thinking is correct in general.

The idea is that you use built-in health check of the deduplication appliance (no matter which vendor) for performance reasons.

We use the 'Read the entire restore point from source backup' option at our primary site - so no health checks are required, but synthesise them over the WAN to our DR site

hmm, not sure what you mean with that. because with "read the entire..." there is no synthetic process on the DR site.

Best regards,
Hannes

[ferrus]

Sorry if it wasn't clear - we have two Data Domains.

The 1st at the live production site, which uses the "Read the entire restore point ..." option - hence no health check required.
The 2nd at the DR site over a WAN link. The best practice is not to use that option for in that scenario, but synthesise the GFS backups from previous restore points.
This brings the issue of whether health checks are required at the DR site, as the GFS backups are not new chains from the source files.

I don't know of any native health checks on Data Domains, so it's a decision as to whether health checks are required at the DR site, or whether (as kb1745 seems to imply) a health check on the primary storage is enough.

[HannesK]

ah, okay... well, health checks are never required - they are only recommended.

Internet search told me that Dell calls it "data invulnerability architecture"