Dell NetWorker 19.9 Administration Guide

Benefits of cloning and staging

Cloning and staging enables you to use storage devices more effectively by moving data between different types of devices. You can copy the data that is stored on local tape devices to other devices in remote locations without an impact to the initial backup performance. You can copy backups from disk devices to tape device to facilitate offsite or long term storage. When you move data from disk to tape, you can use the storage capacity more effectively. When you make use of a deduplicated disk, NetWorker can reclaim the initial storage space for new backups.

NetWorker can only perform a clone operation after a successful backup, which provides the following benefits:

• Allows the backup process to complete at maximum performance without any impact to speed due to multiple write acknowledgments, delays, or retries on one or more devices. A clone operation limits the performance impact on a client, while providing data protection as quickly as possible.
• Ensures that a successful backup, that the data is valid, and that the clone operation completes successfully.
• Ensures that the storage requirements have been determined, and that the storage is made available.
• Allows you to schedule and rank the clone operation outside of the backup window, when resources are less constrained.
• Reduces the load on the backup infrastructure.
• Allows you to easily start recoveries because the backup operation has already completed.