Executive Summary:  Removable hard drive functionality can be added to Arcserve UDP appliances by installing a NetSwap device on the network.  This provides additional drive redundancy and can be used as an alternative or supplement to cloud storage.

Case study results:  A customer using a NetSwap 300 in NAS mode (shared CIFS hard drives) used two 10TB SATA hard drives in High-Rely classic trays and setup an Arcserve job to replicate all data stores to the NetSwap shared drive.  The customer configured the NetSwap to use “Deltasync” between the two drives.  Deltasync works independently and transparently to the Arcserve platform and creates incremental block level copies between the first and second drive. The client was able to create removable copies of a deduped 6.72TB data store with an average job run time of about 10 hours.

Configuration details:    The customer is backing up a total of 37TB on several servers.  Much of the data is Autocad so while compression is not particularly high the Arcserve platform is able to reduce the size of the data store to an impressive 6.72TB. The NetSwap 300 used a single Gigabit Ethernet card for connectivity to achieve the speeds quoted. A NetSwap 350 is available with 10GigE connectivity if more speed is needed.

 

Note that the UDP data is replicated twice.  Once is initiated by Arcserve and the second is continuous & initiated by the Netswap.  So
1) in this case was a Friday Arcserve replication from UDP to NetSwap.

 

 

 

2) the deltasync mirror from Top to bottom drive in the NetSwap.

The client swaps the bottom drive on Mondays, giving time for both jobs to complete and data to be quiescent before a drive swap.  The customer states the drive could easily be swapped daily if data set were a bit smaller, but for safety chooses to do it weekly.

The customer says that the initial Deltasync job to the second hard drive in the NetSwap took 21 hours to a blank hard drive but now the incremental Deltasync jobs are taking between 8-13 hours.  Deltasync copies only changes to files in order to save time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a screen shot of web browser interface of the NetSwap while deltasyncing 10TB drives.  The data is moving at around 90GB/Hr. This example was 10TB drives, Current Maximum capacity per tray is 12TB.  14TB is expected in 2018.

For clients that need even larger archival there is a High-Rely RAIDFrame with the same removable functionality with up to 24TB per removable RAIDPac.  In this configuration each RAIDPac is RAID5 protected and contains three 12TB drives.

Conclusions:  By adding a High-Rely NetSwap appliance Arcserve UDP functionality can be enhanced and large data sets can be archived locally.  Base MSRP for NetSwap 300 is $1095 and the 10TB media trays are $695 each.  Dynamic support with 3 year advance replace warranty is highly recommended on all components.  DS contract for 3 years on base NetSwap  is $440.