Networker/ Cloudboost target migration

The only solution I see here is that you clone the save sets to a temp backup media on the DD from where you migrate them to another cloud provider.

How do you now have things implemented? Cloning LTR backups from DD towards CB device?

Instead of CB, you can also use DDVE (data domain virtual edition) and put them anywhere you like, so that you could clone to every supported cloud provider (GCP, AWS, Azure) or on-prem in vmware/hyper-V/KVM) and have a DDVE there? Since some time DDVE also supports ATOS (active tier object storage) meaning instead of managed disk (limited to 96TB), one can scale up to 256TB raw capacity on each DDVE instance using object storage.

Additional benefit is that you can use NW CCR (clone controled replication) between DD on-prem and the DDVE in the cloud, so that there is also more effective replication occurring between the two DD's, instead of needing to read the whole data on the DD before sending it via CB into the cloud.

For an environment that was completely running in the cloud we switched out CB in favor of DDVE as it also was more similar to cloning we already did on-prem, so to be able to use the exact same approach build around DD instead of adding CB to the mix. So we didn't introduce a 2nd CB to clone towards in another region but rather replaced the one CB with a DDVE in the own region and one remote.

I can't recall what is to be improved wrg to CB in the near future.

Hi Barry,

Since Cloud boost S3 target is limited to single cloud provider. can we introduce a second CB Virtual appliance and have Networker to Duplicate/make second copy of the backup.

So, the existing CB will read the exiting backup and the new CB will write the backups to new S3 target.

Am not sure of licensing requirements with data Domain Virtual edition. I would preferably write to NAS(Netapp).

Appreciate the inputs.

Regards,

Mani

since Cloud boost S3 target is limited to single cloud provider. can we introduce a second CB Virtual appliance and have Networker to Duplicate/make second copy of the backup.

so, the existing CB will read the exiting backup and the new CB will write the backups to new S3 target.

I could be wrong, my knowledge on Networker is limited.

You should be able to add additional CB instances, that use a different cloud backend and be able to clone between them. One would not be linked to the other. However if that is with another cloud provider than you are very likely to have to deal with egress/ingress costs between the two.

DDVE indeed needs licenses for each TB of raw capacity, whereas CB itself does not. But we deemed DDVE more feasible, also as in our case it seemed to show better de-duplication ratios than CB (but we are talking a few years back, so that difference might be less nowadays. I have no current comparison for that anymore). So DDVE was expected to have costs to be more or less similar to CB, as less object storage would be required.

And as said also, DDVE fit our setup way more as we are all-in on DD anyways, whereas CB was the odd one out. Hence we replaced CB in favor of DDVE. But that is also very likely to having a rather good deal for DDVE capacity licenses per TB. In your case it would mean additional costs anyways compared to currently CB.

CB would still suite just fine if one wants to go into the cloud directly instead of having backups on prem.

However if you already have a physical DD on prem (newer DDOS versions also support DDVE having Cloud Tier nowadays), also you can use the cloud tier of DD, to have long term data migrate into the cloud. Then you wouldn't even need a 2nd DDVE in the cloud. However, as things go, this requires the DD on prem to remain available for restores. If it is down, you can't access the data in the cloud.

So it depends on what the requirement is, to have possible cheaper storage in the cloud or rather have more resilient setup, which would need a 2nd backup target, independent from the DD on-prem.

As you already use a separate CB, I assume the latter is also (or even more) important, so to have at least two backup targets?

I miss where writing to Netapp comes from? I thought you wanted to backup to the cloud? Or do you want/need to move out of the cloud again to a on-prem solution?

We would not think about using normal storage, let alone CIFS/NFS as backup target, but would always use a deduplication target, where DD/DDVE can be tightly integrated into NW, better that other dedupe solutions. Yes, you would be tied to Dell fully, but works like a charm. We have moved away completely from (physical but also virtual) tape now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV-6BXvTO8Q shows how to setup DD cloud tier within NW as referenced in KB https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000014175 (How to Implement NetWorker with Data Domain Cloud Tier).