Case Study: Economize usage of Bandwidth in Initial Seed Backup

We all know one inevitable thing about the online backups, the initial upload of all the backed up data to the Remote Backup Server. The initial upload not only costs bandwidth, but also happens to take a longer period than a local backup.

Most of our partners share the same issue and it is one of the most sort out features to be able to do the initial full/seed backup locally in the client and then import the data in the Remote Server.

Typically, the Service Providers ship a hard disk and take the initial set of data from the Customers and then, they import the data to the Remote Backup Server. This is how they do it.

1. Install a local system [Local Backup Server] in the local network with StoreGrid running in Server-Only/Client-Server mode (as this can happen in the initial 30-day trial period, you need not license this system).

2. Mount the USB/External Hard Drive and specify the Storage Location of the Backup Server as the USB/External HDD (from the 'Server Admin -> Server Settings' page).

3. Install StoreGrid as Client-only in all the local systems which need to be backed up and configure the backups to the Local Backup Server.

4. After the backups are complete, ship the USB/External HDD to the Remote Backup Server's location. And perform he steps available in the following URLs for continuing the subsequent incremental backups to the Remote Backup Server.

SP Edition:

Backup Server Side Instructions

Client Side Instructions

Pro Edition:

Backup Server Side Instructions

Client Side Instructions

NOTE:
1. In case you don't have a spare system in the Client network, you can use one of the systems over there which needs backup as the Server temporarily and then change it to Client-only after initial backups.
2. You can uninstall the Local Backup Server after the initial seed backup.
3. In some cases, our Partners have gotten a dedicated Local Backup Server license and they have StoreGrid running in their laptop with it and take a USB/External HDD to with the laptop to perform the initial seed backups.

And as you see with the documentation, this feature is available with both Professional Edition software and the Service Provider Edition software.

PS: A similar feature to import the local backups in the Backup Server to the remote Replication Server is also in the works and will be available soon.