Barracuda Networks 4 manual Features of the Barracuda Backup Service, Barracuda Cloud Storage

Features of the Barracuda Backup Service

The Barracuda Backup Service provides a comprehensive way to back up your data. It includes backup software, storage and replication in one solution. It employs a powerful deduplication technology to reduce the backup storage footprint. It is easy to use, reliable and affordable.

Barracuda Cloud Storage

Barracuda Cloud Storage subscription plans provide diverse offsite storage that scales to meet your changing data requirements. Barracuda Cloud Storage includes secure backup to two separate data centers. Storage is allocated in 100 gigabyte increments and is all disk-based.

Site-to-Site Replication

You can choose to install multiple Barracuda Backup Servers that can synchronize data amongst themselves on an ongoing basis. These Barracuda Backup Servers may be installed in multiple geographical areas to increase the reliability of the data storage. Each Barracuda Backup Server can send data to one or more other Barracuda. Only models 490 and higher can receive data from other Barracuda Backup Servers.

Site-to-site replication provides secure backup to the number of data centers that you implement. You can also choose to backup data to a combination of Barracuda Backup Servers and Barracuda Cloud Storage.

Deduplication for Backup Efficiency

The Barracuda Backup Service employs certain techniques to decrease the amount of bandwidth required to perform backups, keep backup windows as short as possible, and reduce your storage costs. For example, after the initial backup of your computers is complete, the Barracuda Backup Server targets added, changed, or deleted data only, skipping files that have previously been backed up and are unchanged.

In addition, Barracuda Networks has developed an innovative deduplication method of "bit differential analysis" that breaks backed-up data into parts, which are then fingerprinted and compared to all parts on record. Unique binary data parts are kept. Duplicate parts are catalogued in a database for reference and then discarded. For example, if two of your servers share some data, then only one copy of that data is stored in each Barracuda Backup Server.

In order to perform deduplication, the Barracuda Backup Service breaks files down into parts that are no larger than 1 megabyte in size so that they can be analyzed and compared. Those parts are AES 256-bit symmetrically encrypted and each part has its own encrypted key. The parts are stored in their encrypted state in the backup location and remain encrypted until a restore is requested.

Rate Limit

The Barracuda Backup Service enables control over the rate at which data is replicated to the other back up locations throughout the day. The rate control feature provides for the preservation of Internet bandwidth during peak usage and optimizes offsite backup transfers during daily non-peak hours.

6 Barracuda Backup Service Administrator’s Guide