Symantec NetBackup

Accelerate Backups over Unreliable Wide Area Networks

The volume of digital data is growing 40-50% a year. In order to keep up with this rising demand for data storage and protection, enterprises must balance the need for frequent backups to physical media, without impacting day to day operations. To ensure disaster recovery, many organizations maintain backup facilities in locations that are geographically distant from their main data centers.  When the WAN links have limited bandwidth, packet loss, out-of-order packets, or high latency, backup jobs can fail or exceed desired timelines.

How Silver Peak can help

Silver Peak Replication Acceleration software fixes the problems that exist on the WAN, enabling more data to be backed up, in less time, and over longer distances. Silver Peak software solves WAN problems by repairing dropped and out-of-order packets, overcoming the effects of round trip time (RTT) latency, and providing real-time deduplication and compression of all data sent across the WAN. Silver Peak also provides an IPsec AES-256 site-to-site VPN that secures backup traffic without impacting performance.

Once deployed, Silver Peak software is easy to monitor and manage. Reports are in storage-friendly terms showing the data throughput across the WAN in bytes. Storage traffic is segmented by application, such as replication and or backup. Reporting includes minute, hour, and daily intervals, and includes a 10 day chart to reflect performance data before and after any changes made during the weekend.

When the problems on the WAN have been repaired, it is easy to meet, maintain, and even reduce Symantec NetBackup windows.

Silver Peak Results

While NetBackup data has some deduplication built in, customer data shows that Silver Peak can further reduce the amount of redundant NetBackup data through a combination of compression and deduplication. The result—more efficient use of available bandwidth and faster backup times.

Reports from a large insurance carrier show data reduction rates of 56 percent.

Figure 1. Silver Peak optimized NetBackup traffic at an insurance company by 56 percent.

Benefits

  • Meet or decrease backup windows. Back up more data offsite in less time
  • Back up over longer distances. Extend distances between source/target devices
  • Improve business continuity. Maintain distant disaster recovery facility for high availability
  • Lower disaster recovery costs. Back up critical data across existing WANs more efficiently
  • Secure data in transit with an IPsec AES-256 site-to-site VPN
  • Deploy rapidly. No networking expertise required to install
  • Improve troubleshooting by monitoring network conditions & performance with real-time dashboards

Resources

  • Silver Peak VRX Replication Acceleration software makes replication acceleration easy and affordable.