New D2D backup system and Veeam

[TaylorB]

Right now I am running Veeam on a fast server with a 3TB SAS array that holds about 2 weeks of backups using the forever incremental + synthetic full method. I copy off the backup files to tape every day and ship them off site. I have a 2 week retention on site.

However, we just bought a big fancy HP disk backup system. I am being asked to move to keeping 6 weeks of backups on this system. This system replicates data to a second off site disk system. Basically I need to get the backups to a CIFS share on this system. Since this system does compression and deduplication as well, I am curious as to how to proceed.

Are there any recommendations for using such a box? I like the speed I am getting from my locally attached SAS volumes, but I could just point the backups directly to the CIFS share, which is over a Gigabit link. I could also just keep backing up as I am doing, and then start a second job to copy the files from the SAS array to the D2D box after they finish. As I said, I need 6 weeks of backups and can only set a 2 week retention in Veeam due to space limits on the local array.

I was also wondering about compression and dedupe levels. Is it better to let Veeam or the backup device handle this? I have a lot of CPU power on the Veeam server (!6 cores) so it seems like It would be sitting idle if I did zero compression and dedupe.

Any ideas? Sorry for the long ramble but thought someone else might have a similar setup.

[ccrichard]

Your mileage may vary, but I've always had the best results by turning off compression and deduplication in Veeam when my disk based solution has it's own Deduplication. You may have to experiment with turning off Veeam compression but leaving Dedup on and vice-versa.

I also have to turn off Synthetic fulls unfortunately. Make sure the user that is running the service has access persmissions (same userid and password) in the CIFS Share for Veeam to see it.

[Gostev]

Basically, just need to decide what is more important for you.

Compression and dedupe enabled = better backup window at the cost of dedupe ratio on storage device
Compression and dedupe disabled = better dedupe ratio on storage device at the cost of backup window

By the way, with many storage devices, Veeam dedupe does not impact their HW dedupe because it is done with much larger blocks, so usually you can enable that and get significant backup performance boost without sacrificing HW dedupe ratio. Enabling compression does typically impact dedupe though (which is why Veeam first dedupes and then compresses, and not the other way around).

[TaylorB]

Thanks for the replies.

Any advice on whether I should write to my local array and then copy out to the D2D, or just write directly to the D2D? I worry about file management with the two-stop process.

[Gostev]

In case with HP D2D StoreOnce, you can write directly to the device. Thanks.