Offsite Replication - WAN Acceleration

[RayB]

I have been reading through the user guides and many posts about different ways to use off site backup and replication. It seems like everyone has their own way of doing things and unfortunately I haven't found a scenario like mine yet. We currently backup our VM's onsite either hourly, every 4 hours, or daily. I am working on a replication server for offsite which will have VM's backup either every 4 hours, daily, or weekly. Currently I am testing and have been running the replication from the onsite backup repository (NAS), and all has gone great. I am now trying to setup WAN Acceleration and everything slowed down a lot, even though I am still on my LAN. I have tried populating cache, but I am uncertain if I am going about this the right way or not. It appears I cannot populate the cache from the target side, because there are only replicas on that server. I have read warnings that I shouldn't populate the cache from the source side. Where the server is currently on my LAN, does it matter where I initially populate cache from? Or is it an ongoing thing and I need to send backups or backup copies offsite for WAN Acceleration to work. Thanks in advance!

[foggy]

I am now trying to setup WAN Acceleration and everything slowed down a lot, even though I am still on my LAN.

That's expected, since WAN accelerators were designed for slow links and in case of LAN just spend more time processing the data, instead of just sending it over a fast connection.

I have tried populating cache, but I am uncertain if I am going about this the right way or not. It appears I cannot populate the cache from the target side, because there are only replicas on that server. I have read warnings that I shouldn't populate the cache from the source side. Where the server is currently on my LAN, does it matter where I initially populate cache from? Or is it an ongoing thing and I need to send backups or backup copies offsite for WAN Acceleration to work.

You can either start a backup copy job with WAN acceleration to let it populate the cache during the first run or pre-populate cache prior to moving WAN accelerator offsite. It doesn't matter where you're populating the cache from, just make sure the repository that is used for cache population is located close to the WAN accelerator server.

[RayB]

Thanks for the quick response Foggy. Everything is currently on the same Gig network right now so I should be all set to populate cache.

One question about your response, at what speed should you use a WAN Accelerator? We have a 20Mbps upload link that we will be replicating across. I know its much slower than our full Gig LAN, but is this considered a slow link where we should use WAN Acceleration?

[foggy]

Typically under 100Mbps.

[RayB]

Awesome, thank you again!