Barracuda Networks 4 - Manual (Page 8)

6 Barracuda Backup Service Administrator’s Guide
Features of the Barracuda Backup Service
The Barracuda Backup Service provides a comprehensive way to back up your data. It includes
backup software, storage and replication in one solution. It employs a powerful deduplication
technology to reduce the backup storage footprint. It is easy to use, reliable and affordable.
Barracuda Cloud Storage
Barracuda Cloud Storage subscription plans provide diverse offsite storage that scales to meet your
changing data requirements. Barracuda Cloud Storage includes secure backup to two separate data
centers. Storage is allocated in 100 gigabyte increments and is all disk-based.
Site-to-Site Replication
You can choose to install multiple Barracuda Backup Servers that can synchronize data amongst
themselves on an ongoing basis. These Barracuda Backup Servers may be installed in multiple
geographical areas to increase the reliability of the data storage. Each Barracuda Backup Server can
send data to one or more other Barracuda. Only models 490 and higher can receive data from other
Barracuda Backup Servers.
Site-to-site replication provides secure backup to the number of data centers that you implement. You
can also choose to backup data to a combination of Barracuda Backup Servers and Barracuda Cloud
Storage.
Deduplication for Backup Efficiency
The Barracuda Backup Service employs certain techniques to decrease the amount of bandwidth
required to perform backups, keep backup windows as short as possible, and reduce your storage
costs. For example, after the initial backup of your computers is complete, the Barracuda Backup
Server targets added, changed, or deleted data only, skipping files that have previously been backed
up and are unchanged.
In addition, Barracuda Networks has developed an innovative deduplication method of "bit
differential analysis" that breaks backed-up data into parts, which are then fingerprinted and
compared to all parts on record. Unique binary data parts are kept. Duplicate parts are catalogued in
a database for reference and then discarded. For example, if two of your servers share some data, then
only one copy of that data is stored in each Barracuda Backup Server.
In order to perform deduplication, the Barracuda Backup Service breaks files down into parts that are
no larger than 1 megabyte in size so that they can be analyzed and compared. Those parts are AES
256-bit symmetrically encrypted and each part has its own encrypted key. The parts are stored in their
encrypted state in the backup location and remain encrypted until a restore is requested.
Rate Limit
The Barracuda Backup Service enables control over the rate at which data is replicated to the other
back up locations throughout the day. The rate control feature provides for the preservation of Internet
bandwidth during peak usage and optimizes offsite backup transfers during daily non-peak hours.