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We are looking into purchasing a Unitrends solution and using there Vault2cloud product, we want to use this as our DR copy of our critical data. I wanted to what others have experienced in using this service and what the size of their replicated data stores have been. We are going to engage an eval period but we are informed we can’t test the vault2cloud as part of this demo.

Any feedback from current users on support, replication perfomance, rapid seeding and recovery scenario’s would surely help ease my concerns.

thanks,

Tom

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Unless you have a fat and stable internet connection you will have issues. I had a 10/3 DSL connection that would bomb out the V2C and cause the process to kick off a full copy over a 3 meg connections. Needless to say this happened on a day that the boss needed to get a bid out and missed the deadline. I cancelled the service the next day.

Our data stores were probably under 2TB.

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Rockn,

We have a Ethernet over Fiber 50MB internet connection that is very stable. So based on your scenario your DSL connection was maxed out causing email/internet issues for your boss.

Did you use the rapid seed option for your initial data upload?

thanks for your feedback

Tom

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We did use the rapid seed option. After the initial load on their servers it only took a few hours to replicate the changes up to the vault.

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Tom - Thank you for considering Unitrends!

Rapidseeding is encouraged for anyone who has a significant full backup size to reduce the time that it would take to upload a full backup into our cloud.

Please let me know if you’d like to speak with a current V2C customer.

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Katie,

I would very much like to discuss V2C with an active customer please provide asap.

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Tom - Can you private message me your contact information?

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Tom

First off, welcome to the community!! A couple of things to note with your questions:

  • Unitrends allows for very granular control of what data you replicate off site. You set on a per machine [physical or virtual] basis if it is to be replicated or not as well as at the application level such as specific Exchange Mailstores or SQL databases.
  • In normal vaulting / replication operations you can also control the retention periods on the replication target & the amount of space allocated to it. I believe this is the same with the V2C service.
  • The total size of your replicated data very much depends on what you are replicating & what backup strategy you are using. Since there is some data reduction available through deduplication & compression it is hard to give a ‘stock’ answer.
  • When using the V2C service you have an added benefit in a DR scenario. If your on site appliance is rendered unusable [fire / flood / theft etc.] then Unitrends will load your replicated data onto the [free] replacement unit before shipping it to you. This means that [depending on your support level] you could have an appliance with all your data on it in your hands within a couple of days of a disaster, ready to begin getting back up & running.

I would definitely recommend going through some of these technical questions with a presales engineer, they are excellent at coming up with solutions based on your specific needs & requirements. They should also be able to give you a good idea of the amount of V2C space needed.

Hope that helps.

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Robert

I have seen people using a single T1 for V2C successfully, it really depends on what you are trying to do. You can set how much bandwidth the unit should use for vaulting / replication & when it should do so. In your instance you would set the total available bandwidth to 3Mb and then set what % of that is available to be used. Most people set it to 20% or lower during the work day & higher during the evenings & weekends. This correct configuration would have prevented your bandwidth issues and its consequences. If you still have the service available to you I would suggest working with support to get you properly set up again.

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I understand the whole concept of throttling, but this had happened more than once where a copy had kicked off in the middle of the business day and their engineers could not explain it. It was more than likely caused by our data connection which is DSL and not a T1 with the type of SLAs, etc to ensure there are no bounces of the circuit. With a 50MB fiber connection like the OP I would have no issues reinstating V2C

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