WAN accelerator – what is considered a “fast” connection?

[darryl]

We’re still on version 6.5, but need to decide whether to take our free license upgrade to Enterprise Plus.

Our DR site is connected via a 200 Mbps link. We might use Backup Copy jobs in the future. The Veeam documentation indicates to use direct copy for fast connections instead of the WAN accelerator.

Is there any guideline for at what connection speed that the WAN acceleration process ends up slowing the process down?

[foggy]

WAN accelerators should be able to saturate up to 50-100 Mbps connections (with SSD cache, multi-core source WAN accelerator and B&R 7.0 R2 update). Please see this post for details.

[darryl]

Great - thanks for the info.

Using worst case numbers: If we can expect to maintain a 50 Mbps accelerated stream across the wire (decent servers but no SSD), that should be conservatively equivalent to a 500 Mbps direct stream?

Is there extra preparation of the data required before it's actually sent out on the wire? In searching threads I've seen mention of hours to read the source, and also of peaky/uneven data transfer across the wire. Really what I'm trying to ask is that even though the accelerated might be equivalent to 500 Mbps (greater than our 200 Mbps connection between sites that we would acheive without accelerated), is the end-to-end process of the copy potentially slower in elapsed time due to other factors?

Hopefully this makes sense. I just don't have enough time before the Nov 15th deadline to upgrade to 7 and do real-world tests. And I've been told by sales that if I do take the free upgrade to Plus I can't later downgrade it if we don't want the additional functionality.

[Gostev]

No, you will not be able to obtain 50 Mbps saturated without SSD cache.
You can downgrade though, this rule has been changed recently.

[darryl]

Gostev,

Thanks for the reply.

I did do an inquiry direct with Veeam Sales, and they said that there is no downgrade path. This was only two days ago.

This leaves me in a bit of an awkward position - I don't want to do the license upgrade to be told later I can't downgrade, because I have nothing "official" which says that I can.

[Gostev]

Here is the official, written confirmation that you (or anyone else) will be able to downgrade if desired. There will be no going back (you will have to pay the regular upgrade price), but you ARE allowed to go down if you find Enterprise Plus edition functionality not fitting your needs, or too expensive to renew.

You can direct your Veeam sales representative to our Director of Worldwide Maintenance Renewals, if they want confirmation from the person ultimately responsible for renewals here at Veeam.

I am very familiar with this matter, because I was the one pushing for allowing downgrades, and as such I was intimately involved in the discussion. And I have the email from our Director of Renewals sitting in my inbox with the final decision that is said to be approved by company owners. It does not get any more official than that

[m.novelli]

I've recently downgraded a Customer from 12 Enterprise socket to 12 Standard socket, merging them with other 30 Standard socket. Just compiled a form stating than the Customer will not use anymore the Enterprise licenses and I've received the cumulative 42 socket Standard License
Pretty quick and easy, I've opened a ticket with support and in the same days we did all the procedure

Marco

[darryl]

Great - thanks for the info.

I did request a license upgrade to Plus. If it turns out that we don't take advantage of the extra functionality, we'll do the license downgrade.