Offsite Seeding - What's Fastest Portable Device?

[sfens]

Hi,

I will be seeding my backup to my offsite DR location. I am trying a few different portable devices. Each one seems slow, while creating the initial seed at the production data center. Can anyone recommend a fast device?

So far, I've tried a Buffalo Link Station Live with 1 GB interface, and a Lacie Cloudbox. The Cloudbox seems a bit faster, but I'm still concerned that I am not using the fastest device. Both the Buffalo and the Lacie are being used as a CIFS / SMB backup respository.

Question 1:
Would it be faster to install Linux on a PC with a GB interface, and creaate a Linux backup repository? I'm wondering if the CPU / Linux backup repository would make it a faster copy.

Question 2:
That was only the first half - creating the seed. I am also looking at how to speed up the copy to the remote server. The remote server is a standalone ESXi host with a Linux guest installed. When I copy the seeded backup to it, I will probably have to copy over the LAN at the DR site using rsync or something similar. I don't think it would be possible / easy to somehow take the drive out of the pc and mount it on the standalone ESXi host / Linux Guest OS.

Any advice on either / both questions?

Thanks,

Seth

[sfens]

I'm getting 25 MB/s on the backup. I'm using network mode, with the 2 hosts connected to the same GB switch as the cloudbox. I know I will never get anywhere near the 1 GB speed of the interface, but shouldn't I be getting faster than 25 MB/s (200 mbps)?

The statistics show the Target as the bottleneck. Can someone explain what the numbers mean?

source: 7%
proxy: 73%
network: 6%
target: 64%

The only thing I notice is that source + proxy = 100% and network + target = 100%. Can someone explain what these numbers mean?

Thanks,

Seth

[Gostev]

Hi,

Please refer to the sticky FAQ topic for the detailed explanation of these numbers.

Q1. Yes, this should work much faster than what you've been doing so far.
Q2. You could use USB drive, and attach it to the VM (ESXi supports USB pass-through).

Thanks!

[sfens]

Thanks Gostev. Followup question:

For copying the seeded backup to the DR Linux Repository, which would you guess to have a faster copy? USB using passthrough, or a PC with Linux installed? Is there a way to do maximize the copy to DR backup repository in this case?

Thanks

[kjc3303]

I wouldn't copy the Seeded backup to the Linux rep I would use the usb drive as the repository

Copy backup to usb drive at prod site - attach usb to esxi host at DR site - create repository using usb drive via Linux VM

This is how I seed my Backups but with a Windows VM at the DR site, the slowest part is copying the Backup to the USB drive.

Kev

[aevenot]

For my last experience, I will recommend using an iscsi lun (if the NAS supports it) directly from the NAS to the Veeam Server on gigabit network.

Last time, I have used a laptop with a USB drive on USB3.0 Port, then transfer the seed through a CIFS shares and it works very well.

But if your server have a USB 3.0 port (which is almost not the case), you should try and I'm interesting for the bandwidth.