Deduplication option in Backup Exec 2010 – does it work like this

backupexecdeduplication

We have a 6TB backup-to-disk system running with Backup Exec 2010. Each week, a full backup is carried out with differentials on the other days. We manage to get about four weeks of backups in there.

Firstly, am I right in thinking that the deduplication option would more effective use this backup-to-disk space? For example, in each of those four weeks, the same indentical 4GB file is backed up four times (space used = 16GB) but with deduplication only the first copy would be stored?

Secondly, if you enable de-duplication, does it have an immediate effect or does it take time for the deduplication to ripple through the B2D area?

The former would require a job to run on the existing B2D files, locating duplicates and marking up the BKF file as overwriteable.

The later would be far easier to implement as it just effects backups going forward.

If I were a betting man, I'd go for the later option 😉 Easier to code…

Best Answer

The normal setup for using B2D against deduplicated storage systems (or BE's deduplication engine) is to run 1 full backup, and then "incremental forever". This is the preffered method to utilize the deduplication to it's full potential, but it might not suit every datacenter out there.

Deduplication comes in many flavours. I can't remember right now wich one BE uses, but they all create checksums of data blocks and then compare it to a database to see if it's already been stored somewhere else.

Backup Exec have quite the hefty system requirements for running deduplication, you should be aware of this. If I recall correctly it's 1GB of RAM per 1TB of data in the backup cycle.

You should notice the deduplication effect after the full backup has run with the option enabled. This will basicaly be your "base" data as described above, where every incremental backup will deduplicate against the full backup.

I don't see any need to use the existing B2D files. Why not just point your next full backup against a folder on the B2D storage called "dedupe" or something like that?

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