Recommended backup methods for external/NAS stroage

[seth_lutz]

Hi all,

I would just like some clarification on what works best for a backup job configuration designed to reduce backup times for our different storage methods.

Our backup PC's have a USB 3.0 backup drive plugged in and is being used as the repository for the backups.

We are only backing up our smaller clients (sub 6 nodes) through this method. However, that makes up a large group of our client base.

Our larger clients typically have some sort of NAS/SAN for backup.

TL;DR My goal is to try to reduce the time/workload on the devices. What backup job configuration works best for USB 3.0 external drives and NAS repositories with speed in mind?

We are currently using Reverse Incrementals and have a mix of multiple VMs being a separate job to all VMs being combined into one job.

[foggy]

Switching to forward incremental will allow you to avoid heavy random I/O occurred during transformation that is done with reverse incremental method and most likely takes considerable time currently.

[seth_lutz]

Should we just keep our reverse incrementals on our SANs/DAS devices due to the I/O load?

[foggy]

If you're satisfied with the backup performance, you can keep it.