The Challenge: With many independent file servers allotted for each project team and hundreds of projects constantly in progress, it was critical for Heerim Architects to protect their data and minimize business interruption. Construction Management and architectural drawings were stored on data servers that contained sub-divided data storage space for saving prototypes separately. The new and old data, which included architectural drawings, required full data protection as well as a system that could manage the history of changes and modifications to these files. Heerim’s old backup solution caused too many backup windows and was increasing data recovery costs for the company.

The Solution: Heerim selected NetVault: FASTRecover for real-time data protection based on its 30-second recovery capabilities, which makes it possible to go back to any-point-in-time to quickly retrieve consistent data. This was not possible with their old  solution. The fast availability of data after recovery (BakBone’s Virtual On-Demand Recovery technology) was another feature that Heerim looked to employ in their data center because it would minimize downtime.

The Benefit: NetVault: FASTRecover enabled Heerim to protect critical data in real-time and eliminate backup windows. And FASTRecover’s easy-to-use interface reduces the level of expertise for system administrators to perform data recoveries. The high availability of information after recovery also limits operational downtime.

Dawn renee Campbell, Senior Product Manager for NetVault: SmartDisk & NetVault: Backup

After you have determined how much NetVault: SmartDisk (NVSD) capacity you need to license, the next step is calculating how much physical disk space you will need.

As we discovered in my Calculating NetVault: SmartDisk License Capacity blog, NVSD is licensed based on the Logical Capacity of the data that it can store. However, in Deduplicated NVSD Instances, Logical Capacity does not match Physical Capacity or physical disk space. This is because NVSD Deduplication Option packs up to 12 times more protected data into the same storage area for a 92% reduction in storage footprint.

Deduplicated NVSD Instances

A Deduplicated NVSD Instance can have a combination of both Deduplicated and Non-Deduplicated data. In this configuration, calculating the total Physical Capacity or physical disk space is comprised by calculating the Physical Capacity for the Deduplicated Backups followed by calculating the Physical Capacity for the Non-Deduplicated Backups and totaling the sums.

Deduplicated Backups

The Physical Capacity or physical disk space required for Deduplicated Backups in Deduplicated NVSD Instances is equal to the Size of Weekly Full Backups + Unique Data Size and is calculated using the following formula:

(Size of Weekly Full Backups) +

Size of Weekly Full Backups + ((Size of Weekly Full Backups * Weekly Change Rate)

* Weekly Full Backup Retention Period)

+ (Size of Daily Backups * (Number of Daily Backups between Weekly Full Backups

* Daily Backup Retention Period))

Non-Deduplicated Backups

The Physical Capacity or physical disk space required for Non-Deduplicated Backups in a Deduplicated NVSD Instance is calculated using the following formula:

(Size of Non-Deduplicated Weekly Full Backups * Weekly Full Backup Retention Rate)

+ (Size of Non-Deduplicated Daily Backups * (Number of Daily Backups between Full Backups * Daily Backup Retention Period in Weeks))

Total Required Disk Space = Deduplicated Backup Disk Space + Non-Deduplicated Backup Disk Space

The Total Required Disk Space is divided into the Staging Store and the Chunk Store. If different file systems or disk spindles are going to be utilized for the Staging Store and the Chunk Store, it is important to know how much of the Total Required Disk Space will be allocated to the Staging Store versus the Chunk Store. The calculations below can be used to make this determination.

Calculating Staging Store Size

The amount of time a Deduplicated Backup remains in the Staging Store is different than the amount of time a Non-Deduplicated Backup will remain in the Staging Store. Therefore, to determine the total disk space required for the Staging Store, the size required for both Deduplicated Backups and Non-Deduplicated Backups must be calculated and totaled.

Total Staging Store Disk Space = Deduplicated Backup Disk Space + Non-Deduplicated Backup Disk Space

Deduplicated Backups

During the NVSD Deduplicated Backup process, backups are initially streamed to the Staging Store where they remain until the deduplication process is completed. The Staging Store must be big enough to hold all the Deduplicated Backups while they are awaiting deduplication.

If the deduplication window overlaps the backup window, deduplication and backups will occur at the same time. Each backup will start deduplicating once the backup job is completed. Additionally, large backups will be broken into 400GB segments. Each segment will start to deduplicate once it is received even if the backup stream is still being streamed to the Staging Store. Therefore, the Staging Store only requires space to hold some portion of the total backup size. If the Staging Store runs out of space, backups will pause until space becomes available such as when a deduplication operation completes.

The maximum disk space required for the Staging Store is equal to the Size of the Weekly Full Backups.

Non-Deduplicated Backups

Backups that are not deduplicated are streamed into the Staging Store where they will remain until they are retired. Therefore, calculating the size of Staging Store for Non-Deduplicated Backups is identical to calculating the required physical disk space required for Non-Deduplicated Backups in a Deduplicated NVSD Instance.

(Size of Non-Deduplicated Weekly Full Backups * Weekly Full Backup Retention Rate)

+ (Size of Non-Deduplicated Daily Backups * (Number of Daily Backups between Full Backups * Daily Backup Retention Period in Weeks))

Calculating Chunk Store Size

The amount of physical disk space required for the Chunk Store is equal to the Unique Data Size. To calculate the Unique Data Size or the size of the Chunk Store, use the following formula:

Size of Weekly Full Backups + ((Size of Weekly Full Backups * Weekly Change Rate)

* Weekly Full Backup Retention Period)

+ (Size of Daily Backups * (Number of Daily Backups between Weekly Full Backups

* Daily Backup Retention Period))

Non-Deduplicated NVSD Instances

The Physical Capacity or physical disk space required for Non-Deduplicated NVSD Instances is equal to the Logical Capacity because deduplication has been disabled. The Non-Deduplicated NVSD Instance will consume the same amount of disk space for the Staging Store as Logical Capacity that is being licensed.

NVSD Sizing Calculator

Not only does the NetVault: SmartDisk Sizing Calculator let you simply calculate the NVSD Capacity you need to license, it will also tell you the estimated physical capacity. If you haven’t already obtained it, you can ask your BakBone Representative for the NVSD Sizing Calculator.

In my next NVSD blog, we will explore where to deploy your NVSD Instances.

Andrew Martin

When it comes to choosing “best-of-breed” in data protection the choice is neither simple nor obvious.

What does best-of-breed actually mean? Do we mean best-of-breed vendors that can provide total solutions from the ground up? Or do we mean the best technology for a given purpose?

An interesting analogy to use might be the financial services industry and how we buy insurance. We can go directly to an advisor from a large reputable insurance company or at the other extreme we can work with a third party insurance broker.

We get peace of mind when dealing with the big insurance company advisor, however they can only offer products from their own company. Whilst some of their offerings might be great, quite simply they will not have the best product available for every type of insurance requirement. On the other extreme is the third party broker – they can offer you a choice of products in every field and allow you to select the best one for your needs. However, you may have questions about the broker’s stability or even ethics. And, you may not have heard of some of the products that they offer you.

On balance I have always taken the “broker” approach. Initially it carries slightly more risk, but as an individual broker proves themselves to be trustworthy and stable over time, that risk diminishes. Ultimately, the broker is able to identify and offer me more individualised products that are better for me.

If we bring this back to data protection we see the “one stop shops” that offer solutions on every aspect of data protection including primary storage, storage management, backup and recovery, high availability, provisioning and archive. We also have companies that offer a range of closely linked solutions in specific areas of data protection. My own company, BakBone Software, fits into this category with a range of solutions all closely linked to protection and recovery of data across a wide variety of applications and platforms. Finally, there are point solution companies; more usually (though not always) these are start-up companies and often they get consumed by bigger companies over time. An example would be Asempra. This was a company with a targeted solution for fast recovery of windows applications, acquired last year by BakBone and integrated into the wider portfolio. However, these “point” solution companies need not be small. Another example might be Data Domain, who had developed a global business by the time they were acquired.

The large “one stop shop companies” are often labeled “best-of-breed” by default. They offer integrated total solutions and peace of mind that comes with working with a trusted, established player. However, no one truly believes that every solution on the books of a large player is the best-of-breed in its class.

The other option is to place your trust in the advice of a true value added systems integrator. A good SI will have strong knowledge of offerings from various vendors and assesses what they believe are the best products and build them into a single integrated solution that they vouch for, implement and provide first line support. As a company that works closely with SI’s we often see this happen at BakBone. As an example, it is not uncommon to see our FASTRecover technology integrated into an environment often already using another company’s backup software.

In principle this SI led approach should ensure you get “best-of-breed” for your own precise requirements. However, much depends on the quality and real knowledge of the SI that you work with. As with the insurance broker analogy, this risk is minimised as the SI gains your trust over time by delivering proven projects.

My personal view is that working with a knowledgeable, reputable SI is the best way to get “best-of-breed.” I subscribe to this way of thinking for a number of reasons:

1. No single requirement is the same, therefore no one company can offer the best solution for every data protection requirement that presents itself.
2. New technologies and new ways of doing things are often brought to the market by newer companies.
3. By definition “one stop shops” need to steer customers towards “their view of the data protection world.” By contrast an SI works harder to find solutions that meet how their customer wants to operate.

I understand and accept that “one stop shops” can sometimes be the best option for some companies. However when it comes to choosing “best-of-breed” for your own requirements, it actually comes down to understanding and meeting your own specific needs and the answer will rarely be the same from one company to the next. For that reason, choice and differentiation will always remain vital in choosing what’s best for you.

Steve Adler, Technical Support & Operations Lead

We back up our data so that in case of a data loss event, we have the ability to restore that data. But how do you protect the data that you’ve backed up. You can send it offsite, but what happens if that offsite location is affected by a catastrophic event? It’s simple really. Make another copy!

NetVault: Backup provides two different ways to make additional copies of your backups. Duplication and Data Copy. What’s the difference?

The Duplication method creates an exact secondary copy which is linked to the original primary backup. During duplication, the copy is broken into segments and stored on the secondary backup device. During restore, segments from the primary copy and the secondary copy are interchangeable. This means that even if you no longer have all of the original tapes, as long as the media that contains the duplicates of that data is available, you’ll be able to restore that data. You can basically “fill in the blanks” with the duplicated data.

However, encrypting that data for added security can pose a problem. It is impossible to unencrypt the primary backup and encrypt the secondary copy because it is not possible to mix unencrypted segments with encrypted segments during restore. If the original saveset is encrypted, the Duplicate method will create an encrypted secondary copy. If you have no encryption for the primary backup, the secondary copy will also be unencrypted.

The Data Copy method is recommended when you want to create a secondary copy for offsite storage. Data Copying a backup breaks the backup into segments and copies the segments onto the targeted backup device. During restore, NetVault: Backup only restores the primary copy or the secondary copy. Backup segments from the primary and the secondary are not interchangeable. This means that if you are missing part of the original backup, you will need the entire secondary copy available to perform a restore. You can’t just “fill in the blanks.” However, this enables the ability to encrypt the Data Copy, or secondary copy, while the primary copy remains unencrypted such as with deduplicated primary backups.

By incorporating one or both of these strategies to copy your data, you can decrease the chance of losing your backups to a catastrophic event so you can recover your data when you need it