Dell PowerVault DL2200 CommVault - Manual (Page 4)

Dell PowerVault DL2000 Remote Office Backup Strategy
Page 2
Executive Summary
The Remote Office Backup Solution (SDR) is designed to seamlessly replicate data from remote office
DL2000 media agents—which are ideal systems for disaster tolerance and recovery protection—to a
centralized data center, where data is stored on magnetic media for ready access. Consolidating all
backup data at the centralized data center provides redundancy for disaster recovery, as well as an
alternate source for normal data recovery operations.
This innovative solution is easily deployed, without any disruption of current data protection operations,
and with no impact to end users at remote offices; no additional software or configuration is required on
client computers, as only DL2000 media agents are involved. Even more importantly, the data from every
CommVault
®
iDataAgent deployed at a remote office can be replicated to the centralized data center, no
matter the source of the data—this includes all supported file systems, databases, and data types. By
utilizing a pair of DL2000s, you effectively have a self-contained remote office management solution that
is cost effective and requires a short, one-time setup process.
Introduction
Remote office data can be consolidated in two ways for data protection. The traditional method is to
backup servers in remote offices to a local media agent, and then Auxilary Copy (AuxCopy) the data to a
central site. While simple, this method requires a significant amount of network bandwidth to transfer the
backups. Since AuxCopy operations are performed outside the backup window, this consumes network
bandwidth during business hours, unless a dedicated network is available for backups. A second method
is to use Continuous Data Replicator (CDR) technology to replicate remote office data to a central
location. Once the initial replica is created, only changed bytes are continuously transferred, thus using
less network bandwidth. While highly effective, neither of these consolidation methods leverages the
Object Level Single Instancing (SIS) functionality introduced in CommVault® Simpana® 7.0 software.
This feature prevents duplicate objects from being transmitted over the network and thus reduces both
the network bandwidth usage and the amount of space required to backup the data.
Simpana 7.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2) introduces Discrete Data Replicator (DDR), an extension to the CDR
model which, in conjunction with a replicated disk library, transfers only the unique backed-up objects
from remote offices to the central data center. This functionality, also called Remote Single Instance
Backup, enables network efficient remote replication and consolidation of data protection copies in the
data center, yet retains the ability to perform local backups and restores. This document describes how
DDR helps prevent duplicate objects from being transmitted over the network, thus reducing bandwidth
utilization and lowering disk costs.
What is Discrete Data Replicator (DDR)?
Simpana 7.0 software introduces a special configuration of CDR that eliminates the use of a continuous
byte-level capture driver; this configuration is called Discrete Data Replicator (DDR). Unlike CDR, DDR
does not continuously monitor changes on the source file system. Instead, it initiates a SmartSync
operation between the source and target file areas on a periodic basis, replicating new file changes and