Product data

Table Of Contents

Storage Concepts and Technologies

to (especially for a lot of data). Backups are regularly sent off-site without user interaction.

Data can be encrypted during transmission and storage for more efficient use of bandwidth

and storage resources.

CISF allows the user to send files being backed up to a remote designated storage backup site

(third party) that is accessed via a WAN connection where that system supports CIFS

connections. Most third party backup services provide CISF clients that use efficient backup

algorithms.

The required configuration is the same as for a local backup. The administrator uses the

‘backup’ utility in the source device’s GUI menu to select the specific shares for which

backup is required, the frequency of the backup and the target CIFS share where the backup

file is to be written. The target must still include a Server name (and User ID and Password).

When the system clock reaches the configured backup time, the system will select those

shares, concatenate them into a Tape Archive formatted file and compress that file using

GZIP. The compressed file is then written to the target device share over the network using

CIFS.

There are several options to consider with a remote backup:

4. Network bandwidth: The capacity of the WAN link can limit remote backup

performance. Depending on the link, an initial full backup can take many days (after

that, only changes will be sent), and restoring data can take hours. Typically,

bandwidth will be in the 100’s of Kilobits/second, versus the LAN-based local CPE

copy where the network links are either 100’s or 1000’s of Megabits/second. Increased

bandwidth can be expensive, and for most companies, it's hard to justify making the

change for backup alone. But if remote office data is growing fast enough, it's likely

that there are other communication problems that would also benefit from a larger

link.

5. Backup method: The conventional model is to do daily incremental (changes only) and

weekly full backups, which is simple to set up and administer on the Linksys NSS. The

drawback to incremental backups is that you risk losing all data created since the last

backup, so you should be prepared to perform frequent remote backups. The Linksys

NSS’ time-organized save sets make it easy to cycle remote backups to off-site storage

and bring data back again as needed.

Volume Snapshots

Snapshots are another approach to backing up data. A storage snapshot is a set of reference

markers, or pointers, to data stored on a volume. Snapshots streamline access to stored data

and can speed up the process of data recovery.

Linksys NSS have a snapshot capability that supports single file restore from an image

backup and incremental backups against an image backup (Figure 19). Both features are

important.

20 EDCS-593805 v1.0

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