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Best Practices for Customers with Low Bandwidth

  • This article is for Windows only

For customers whose backups will take a very long time due to low bandwidth, large amounts of data, or both, extra precautions should be taken to ensure that backups function as smoothly as possible.

The following are best practices and other suggestions designed to make very large, long-running backups easier and more likely to complete on time:

The sections below are collapsed. Please click the section title to open / close a particular section.

Backup to Disk and Cloud

Carbonite Safe Server Backup places backup data on disk, on the cloud, or on both. Backups that take a long time should not be backed up to the cloud only. It is best to back up to disk and cloud.

When Disk and Cloud is chosen, backups are uploaded as soon as the backup to disk is complete. If Disk only is chosen, users can create a special Upload schedule to upload all backups for the current backup set that have not yet been uploaded. This allows great flexibility. For example, a user could back up multiple times per day, but only upload at night.

This flexibility allows uploads to occur at more convenient times, but convenience is not the only reason to back up to disk and cloud. Speed, stability, and performance are also major benefits.

Restores from Disk are Faster than Restores from Cloud

When restoring from the cloud, consider the time it takes to download the data. This could be hours, days, or more, depending on the size of the restore and the available bandwidth.

It is faster to restore from local disk, as no download is required.

By backing up to disk and the cloud, you have both the speed of local backups and the security of cloud backups.

Uploads from Disk are More Stable and Have Better Performance

The Backup to Disk and Cloud operation will save your backup to local disk, then upload that to the cloud. This process is more stable and has better performance than backing up to cloud only.

The Backup to Cloud operation is intended for smaller uploads. For more information, please refer to Limitations of the Backup to Cloud Operation.

Allow Time for Each Backup to Complete

As a general rule of thumb, every system should be able to upload an incremental or differential backup overnight and a full backup in no more than 2.5 days. This allows the backups to be run every night or over a weekend when they will not interfere with anything else.

For example, a customer with a 1 Mbps upload speed and a full backup of 10 Gigabytes (GB) can upload that full amount of data in about a day. Incremental backups will usually be far smaller than the full backup, so overnight uploads would be no problem. This customer would be fine with the default schedules and settings.

However, it would take about ten days for the same customer to upload 100 GB of data. The incremental backups, if more than a few gigabytes in size, wouldn't be able to finish overnight. These backups wouldn't have time to upload before the next one is scheduled to start.

If your data and bandwidth do not allow you to complete backups in a timely fashion, consider the options below:

Run Fewer Full Backups, but Do Not Remove them Completely

Usually, it is the full backups that have the most trouble completing in time for the next backup. You can ease this pain by performing fewer full backups.

A regular, scheduled full backup is still required for performance and restore reasons, so don't remove them entirely.

For example, change the full backup to run once a month instead of once a week. If necessary, space the full backups further apart. We recommend that full backups for active backup sets be performed no less than once every three months.

Split the Data into Multiple Backup Sets

If you still do not have time or bandwidth to complete a full backup once every three months, consider splitting up the data into multiple backup sets. You don't have to back up the entire File System in a single backup set.

This applies for all backup types, including Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange Server, or any other backup type.

Create multiple, smaller backup sets to split the data up along some logical lines. For example, you could back up your C: drive in one backup set and the D: drive in another. Some databases can go into one backup set while others go into a different one, and so on.

This allows you to schedule your full backups, which will always be the largest backups, to run separately so that each has time to complete.

Schedule Your Full Backups on Different Weeks or Months

You may have noticed that our default schedules, most of which run a full backup once a month, usually have the full backup for one backup type running on a different week than the full backup for another backup type.

Use that same logic when creating custom backup schedules. For example, you can run the full backup for one backup set on the first weekend of the month and the full backup for another on the second weekend of the month.

Utilize Compression and Bandwidth Throttling

Ensure that Compression is Enabled

Carbonite Safe Server Backup enables compression by default. This reduces the size of the data before it is uploaded. This can drastically reduce the time it takes to upload the data.

If compression is enabled, the final size of a backup will be much smaller than the uncompressed size. It is difficult to predict exactly how much any given data set will compress. Documents and databases tend to compress very well. Multimedia files, such as music and video, usually do not compress well, but will still see some benefit.

Do not disable compression. If compression has been disabled, please enable it.

Ensure Bandwidth Throttling if Necessary

By default, CSSB will use all available bandwidth when uploading or downloading data. This can affect network performance.

CSSB offers bandwidth throttling to limit the amount of bandwidth used during data transfer. Bandwidth can be throttled at all times or at certain times.

Limiting the amount of bandwidth will make the transfer take longer, so please adjust your overall configuration to compensate.

Prioritize Your Data

If you still do not have enough time or bandwidth to upload your data on a regular basis, it is time to prioritize. Non-critical data can be backed up less frequently than critical data. Some data may go to the cloud and some may not.

Back Up Inactive Data on an Infrequent Basis

You may have some data that rarely or never changes. This data can be considered inactive.

If you have a large quantity of inactive data, create a backup set that will back up on an infrequent basis. This backup set does not need to be backed up daily. For example, you could run a full backup once a year and an incremental or differential backup once month just in case something changes. Adjust these schedules to suit your needs.

By separating the inactive data, you have more time and bandwidth to back up data that is actively changing.

Back Up Non-Critical Data to Disk Only

You may also consider backing up inactive or non-critical data to disk only. If you do, it is a best practice to create a second copy of the backup.

To copy the data, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the folder where your backups are saved.
  2. Copy all of the files to one or more alternate drives.
    1. Do not put some backup files on one drive and some on another. Be sure keep all of the backup files together on a single drive.
  3. Do not move or modify the original backup files on disk.

Consider using CSSB's ability to run scripts after a backup to automate the process.

As a best practice, manually move one of the alternate drives to another location off-site on a regular basis. You may need to utilize multiple drives.

Exclude Some Data from Backup

Some data may not need to be backed up at all, such as music, videos, or files downloaded from the internet. CSSB performs ‘file level’ backups for the File System backup type. When a file is eligible for backup, such as a file that has been modified being included in an incremental backup, the entire file is backed up. Large files, including but not limited to .PST files, can cause backups to be larger than expected. Excluding these files from your backup set can reduce the size of the backup.

However, take great care when excluding data from backup. Data that is not backed up cannot be restored. Always consider your needs and priorities. Data that cannot be replaced should never be excluded from the backup.

It is recommended to exclude files and folders as a last resort only.

Data can be excluded from backups in two ways.

  1. For most backup types, you may deselect the data from the Backup Details page. Click Edit Backup Set to update your backup selection.
  2. For File System backups, there is an Exclude Files option. Files and folders selected here will be skipped at backup time. You may enter your own exclusions or choose one of many presets.
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