Remote Online backups

  • We have about 40 locations worldwide, with a typical data size of about 200 GB per location, with some up to 2 TB. Most sites have 1024 to 1536 Kb/s MPLS links, with a few 2 Mb/s and one 4.5 Mb/s. Central data center has two 45 Mb/s links.

    We are looking to remote, online backups to our data center from each location. I'm wondering which products and processes have worked.

    Has anybody successfully implemented remote, online backups of Windows servers across their WAN to a central data center?

  • stuartreid73 (3/20/2008)


    We have about 40 locations worldwide, with a typical data size of about 200 GB per location, with some up to 2 TB. Most sites have 1024 to 1536 Kb/s MPLS links, with a few 2 Mb/s and one 4.5 Mb/s. Central data center has two 45 Mb/s links.

    We are looking to remote, online backups to our data center from each location. I'm wondering which products and processes have worked.

    Has anybody successfully implemented remote, online backups of Windows servers across their WAN to a central data center?

    I've worked somewhere where we copied backups to a remote data center but the WAN link was considerably faster. I wasn't involved with that side of things though but a 1 Mb/s link seems kind of slow to transfer 200 GB of data. For starters I'd seriously recommend you look at a third-party backup compression tool for SQL Server backups. There are a couple of options for you there that will potentially give you a 1:4 compression ratio, which could make 200 GB into 50 GB, which is start. Bear in mind though that SQL Server 2008 will include backup compression.

  • use some third party tools (eg. Redgate tools, etc) to compress the backup data and then transfer data over WAN.

  • Kishore

    Dead on advice, exactly the procedure I used in a similar situation. This can also be used for your offsite storage as well.

    Marvin Dillard
    Senior Consultant
    Claraview Inc

  • Redgate tool will be helpful.

    [font="Verdana"]--www.sqlvillage.com[/size][/font]

  • All of the below mentioned tools are for SQL Server backups only. I believe all of these products can be downloaded for evaluation:

    Litespeed (Quest)

    http://www.quest.com/litespeed-for-sql-server/

    SQL Backup (Red Gate)

    http://www.red-gate.com/products/SQL_Backup/index.htm

    SQL Safe (Idera)

    http://www.idera.com/Products/SQLsafe/

    Hyperbac

    http://www.hyperbac.com/products/sqlserver/

    ... the last option is to write the backups locally, compress the backup, then copy across the WAN.

    Hope This Helps,

    "Key"
    MCITP: DBA, MCSE, MCTS: SQL 2005, OCP

  • How about making the backups locally to a tape, and dropping the tape into a FedEx package to ship to a central repository?

    The data transfer rate is very high, but with high latency.

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply