Dell DL1000 Appliance Deployment Guide

A decade ago, the standard backbone infrastructure featured speeds of 100 megabits per second. Demands for network traffic and input and output have increased steadily and substantially. As a result, standards for network backbones have increased to meet demand. Modern network backbones support speeds such as gigabit Ethernet (GbE), which transfers Ethernet frames at 1 gigabit per second, or 10GbE, which is ten times faster.

For running Rapid Recovery, Dell requires a minimum network infrastructure of 1GbE for efficient performance. Dell recommends 10GbE networks for robust environments. 10GbE networks are also recommended when protecting servers featuring large volumes (5TB or higher).

If multiple network interface cards (NICs) are available on the Core machine that support NIC teaming (grouping several physical NICs into a single logical NIC), and if the switches on the network allow it, then using NIC teaming on the Core may provide extra performance. In such cases, teaming up spare network cards that support NIC teaming on any protected machines, when possible, may also increase overall performance.

If the core uses iSCSI or Network Attached Storage (NAS), Dell recommends using separate NIC cards for storage and network traffic, respectively.

Use network cables with the appropriate rating to obtain the expected bandwidth. Dell recommends testing your network performance regularly and adjusting your hardware accordingly.

These suggestions are based on typical networking needs of a network infrastructure to support all business operations, in addition to the backup, replication, and recovery capabilities Rapid Recovery provides.