How to Eliminate Tape Backup and Off-site Storage Service?
- by Daniel Lucas
PLEASE READ UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM. THANKS! ;)
Environment Info (all Windows):
2 sites
30 servers site #1 (3TB of backup data)
5 servers site #2 (1TB of backup data)
MPLS backbone tunnel connecting site #1 and site #2
Current Backup Process:
Online Backup (disk-to-disk)
Site #1 has a server running Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 with four 1TB USB 2.0 disks. BE jobs for full backups run nightly on all servers in site #1 to these disks. Site #2 backs up to a central file server there using software they already had when we purchased them. A BE job pulls that data nightly to site #1 and stores them on said disks.
Off-site Backup (tape)
Connected to our backup server is a tape drive. BE backs up the external disks to tape once a week which gets picked up by our off-site storage company. Obviously we rotate two tape libraries, one is always here and one is always there.
Requirements:
Eliminate the need for tape and off-site storage service by doing disk-to-disk at each site and replicating site #1 to site #2 and vice versa.
Software based solution as hardware options have been too pricey (ie, SonicWall, Arkeia).
Agents for Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL.
Some Ideas So Far:
Storage
DroboPro at each site with an initial 8TB of storage (these are expandable up to 16TB at present). I like these because they are rackmountable, allow disparate drives, and have iSCSI interfaces. They are relatively cheap too.
Software
Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 already has all the agents and licenses we need. I'd like to keep using it unless there is a better solution, similarly priced, that does everything BE does plus deduplication and replication.
Server
Because there is no more need for a SCSI adapter (for tape drive) we are going to virtualize our backup server as it is currently the only physical machine save for SQL boxes.
Problems:
When replicating between sites we want as little data as possible to go across the pipe. There is no deduplication or compression in what I have laid out here so far.
The files being replicated are BE's virtual tape libraries from our disk-to-disk backup. Because of this each of those huge files will go across the wire every week because they change every day.
And Finally, the Question:
Is there any software out there that does deduplication, or at least compression, to handle just our site-to-site replication? Or, looking at our setup, is there any other solution that I am missing that might be cheaper, faster, better?
Thanks. Sorry so long.
UPDATE 2:
I've set a bounty on this question to get it more attention. I'm looking for software that will handle replication of data between two sites using the least amount of data possible (either compression, deduplication, or some other method). Something similar to rsync would work but it needs to be native to Windows and not a port involving shenanigans to get up and running. Prefer a GUI based product and I don't mind shelling out a few bones if it works.
Please, answers that meet the above criteria only. If you don't think one exists or if you think I'm being to restrictive keep it to yourself. If after seven days there is no answer at all, so be it. Thanks again everyone.
UPDATE 2:
I really appreciate everyone coming forward with suggestions. There is no way for me to try all of these before the bounty expires. For now I'm going to let this bounty run out and whoever has the most votes will get the 100 rep points. Thanks again!
