When I heard that Data Domain Boost was coming in Veeam Backup & Replication v8, part of Veeam Availability Suite, I initially didn’t think much of it. After using the beta for a while now, I am very surprised how much the Active Full backup benefits from Data Domain Boost! Let’s dig into what I’m so excited about and how it works.
There are a number of new features I mentioned when I blogged about the new feature in June, but I use the Active Full backup a lot myself, and let’s explain how this works. It is true source side deduplication when data is coming into the Data Domain appliance. Blocks from the virtual disks of VMs that are already on the appliance are not even transferred. The best place to see this is in the backup job below. Check out the rise of the green vs. red lines in the backup window:
This is key for a number of reasons. That divide between the red and green is where Data Domain Boost is kicking in on an Active Full backup. These VMs are thin provisioned, on block storage, are on a 1 Gigabit Ethernet network and are ingesting to the Data Domain appliance at well over 100 MB/s in the Veeam job monitor. I even hit over 200 MB/s at one point during an Active Full backup.
We have a number of different lab environments here at Veeam, but I noticed that this environment over time started performing better with Data Domain Boost as I used it more. Why? Because more data has been ingested. There is now more source data that is deduplicated and as more deduplication hits come in; they are deduplicated before they even get transferred. This was truly awesome as when more like VMs are backed up, the Active Full backup is ridiculously quick.
Whether there are VMs that are in more than one backup job (quite common actually!) or if VMs are deployed from a template, the like blocks will benefit from Data Domain Boost over time. Either way, this feature will help on ingest to the Data Domain over time making backups perform better.
Do you see the Active Full backup helping to reduce your backup windows? If so, how? Share your comments below.
More information on Data Domain Boost with Veeam Backup & Replicatin v8: