Probax Information
      Back to home
      1. Knowledge Base
      2. Probax Information

      How to: Estimating Your Veeam Hot and Cold Storage

      This article will assist you in estimating the storage used by your Veeam backup jobs on the Probax Cloud.

      1. Using Veeam's Calculator

      2. Hive Access

      1. Using Veeam's Calculator to estimate hot storage use

      The following method of estimating hot storage relies on Veeam's Backup Capacity Calculator, a tool which limits the parameters that can be set to mirror real-life backup environments. It is recommended to approach these estimations liberally.
      https://calculator.veeam.com/

      In cases where Probax's Partners need to quote a solution, it can be useful to gain an approximate value of the storage used on the Probax Cloud. Probax recommends using the Veeam Backup Capacity Calculator, though with a few guidelines in place. 
      https://calculator.veeam.com/

      The following are considerations should be made:

        1. The Source Capacity refers to the total data of a Server/VM destined to be backed up.
          Note: Veeam's calculator works only in increments of 1TB

        2. The Daily Change rate refers to how often the Server/VM is used, and thereby how much the daily data will change. 
          File Servers and SQL Servers will incur a larger change rate (>10%), whilst simple Servers/VM's like Domain Controllers and Backup Servers will incur a lower change rate (<5%)
        3. The Yearly Growth can be ignored for customers looking at their first set of backups, though can be factored in at the percentage of your choosing.
        4. The Scope for growth can also be ignored in the event you're only concerned of the usage before one year. 
        5. The Reduction factor is synonymous with 'compression', and will vary greatly depending on many factors. Probax recommends 30% compression as a conservative estimate.
        6. Feel free to leave the REFS/XFS slider to 'On'
        7. For the Primary backup policy, use the 'Daily' column as the Hot Storage retention for your job, with the 'Weekly', 'Monthly' and 'Yearly' options left as '0'
          * Please turn off Backup copy policy for this calculation

          estimator

          Use the 'Calculate' button as liberally as you would like, remembering to notate your results for reference. Most customer's find that after testing through creating jobs to the Probax Cloud, the 'change factors' (such as 'Daily change rate' and 'Reduction') need to be altered. 

          2. Estimating Cold Storage Usage

          For customers looking to utilise Cold Storage, Probax currently delivers archival storage (AaaS) manually, bypassing the need for excess storage through Veeam's architecture. This way, the overall capacity of any given Machine/Job is completely based on the size of the full backup image (.vbk). Find more information on this method of archiving in our Knowledgebase.

            • All images stored in Cold storage are a reflection of the .vbk at the time the image is copied, which can result in some minor fluctuation. 

            • For any given backup chain, the cold storage utilised is calculated by 
              The size of your .vbk file x The amount of cold storage retention you set

            • This means that as you elect to hold more Weekly/Monthly/Yearly images, the overall usage size increases proportionally based on the number of images you decide to hold

            For additional information on estimating usages, please contact the Probax Sales Team