Veeam Dedup or Windows Dedup

[penfold]

We are in the process of upgrading and we have had a consultant in who recommended that we use Veeam Dedup and questioned why we would want to use Windows dedup when Veeam will do it all. The reason I wanted it was due to keeping multiple weekly/monthly backups for our File Servers on disk which at present we can't do. We can only do this for our smaller systems as we don't have the space to do this for our larger VMs.

 

The way I understand it is that Veeam will do good dedup on the backup job, but I can't see how it will be better than the Windows Dedup once you take into account keeping multiple fulls on disk. How is everyone else doing it?

[pantscat]

I'm a little confused - are you talking about using a Windows dedupe'd volume as a backup repository?

[penfold]

Yes. I wanted to be able to have a longer retention on disk so I don't need to go to tape should I need to do a restore. In my thinking, using Windows dedup on the backup repository would allow me to do that.

[pantscat]

You can do this - there's no reason why not, and I've heard some reports that using both Veeam and Windows dedupe can get some pretty impressive savings.

 

Veeam do have knowledge base article about using Windows dedupe - https://www.veeam.com/kb2023 - definitely follow the advice in here to avoid any potential issues.

[penfold]

This is what we are currently doing with our small systems. We do have a few which are getting towards 1TB in backup size, but after having to restore a whole system from tape to get at some files, I want to keep disk backups for longer with our larger systems. We are currently restricted by our backup repository size so moving forward I want to ensure our backup design is good from the off.

 

Thanks

[FragglePete]

Just be wary of the issue (covered here: Dedupe Corruption on large files) and also on the Veeam forums of late. Only really covers you if your using Server 2016 and have de-dupe enabled.

 

I'm using Veeam with 2016 and have files touching 1.9Tb, although I have de-dupe on the server enabled (needed for de-dupe restores), I don't have it enabled on the volume where the backup files sit. So, not sure if it will be an issue for me but looking into it.

 

There is a Windows pre-update that has been released (only available through the Windows Catalogue just yet), but there are now reports of it breaking Veeam services.

 

Pete

[penfold]

@FragglePete - I had been reading about that. We are using Windows 2012R2 but something to keep in mind when updating (which is what I want to do). The way I see it is that if De-dup is enabled but set for after 5 days it then gives us a chance to run a tape job to take Fulls to tape and then save space by dedup running. That way should any corruption take place we can always refer to tape for restore if required but hopefully we can just use longer term retention from disk.

[FragglePete]

@FragglePete - I had been reading about that. We are using Windows 2012R2 but something to keep in mind when updating (which is what I want to do). The way I see it is that if De-dup is enabled but set for after 5 days it then gives us a chance to run a tape job to take Fulls to tape and then save space by dedup running. That way should any corruption take place we can always refer to tape for restore if required but hopefully we can just use longer term retention from disk.

 

Looks like it only comes into play if your throwing large files into de-dupe on 2016, so it shouldn't affect me - like the idea of it though. Backup your VMs which are de-duped and compressed by the Veeam backup process and then de-dupe those files on the backup server...... !!!!

 

Pete

[PotNoodleTech]

Double dedupe does sound awesome. I'm gonna try it on a secondary backup target after April.

[penfold]

I thought for best compression rates you didn't dedup through veeam? I thought it was best to set the veeam job compression level on Dedup-friendly and then dedup on Windows?

[pantscat]

Compression and dedupe are too fairly different things.

 

Veeam's recommendations are to use it's own dedupe plus "dedupe friendly compression" if you're going to be using a backup repository with native dedupe.

[penfold]

My Bad - been playing with our veeam server which is not playing ball and looking specifically at these settings....

[pantscat]

Easily done!