Best Practices

July 21, 2025

Dedicated Restore Drive on Replication Server

In order to facilitate a fast restore of snapshots from the retention area on the replication server, it is recommended the files are not restored to an existing receiver home drive to avoid affecting replication performance. Your replication server should be configured with a dedicated disk for restore purposes. Alternatively, an external USB drive can also be used.

Storage Requirement on Replication Server

The amount of space required to keep this replication depends on the amount of data changed on your Backup Server.

To calculate the amount of storage required for the retention settings, we can base on the following assumption and formula.

Assumption:

There is a 2% data change in the backup server daily.

Formula:

Total data storage required = (1+0.02)n x original data size, where n = number of days of the retention customization policy.

For n=30 days, it will be around 1.81 times of the original data size, and 3.28 times if n=60.

Replication Server with Multiple Receivers

If you have configured multiple receivers on your replication server to serve more than one backup server, it is recommended that each receiver is located on its own individual disk. The major advantage of this kind of setup is that it will minimize the I/O on each disk and therefore improve the replication performance.

Replication Using Cross Over Cable

It is not recommended to set up a connection between the backup server and replication server using a cross over cable. As from our experience this setup will result in connection and performance issues.

If the backup server and replication server are located on the same site, they should be connected via a switch.

Do Not Deploy the Backup and Replication Server on a Single Machine

It is not recommended to configure and use both services on one single machine because it will completely defeat the purpose of the replication service as a backup or standby server for your backup server.