Question : Problem: Expert needed for SonicWALL CDP 4440i

I am not familiar with this backup technology...
Looking at the model l4440i specifically...

Issue...

Have a new client with NO backup...has about 700Gb to backup...would like to get at least the most important data
off-site...

Creates/changes  about 20Mb per day...more or less...dumps old unneeded data about once a month...so this 700 Gb total grows slowly...

Uses server/domain, but most data sits on individual computers...due to extensive amount of linking done between Word and Excel...to get all data on the server I would have to re-creat the paths for the links...might be an almost impossible job...many documents have several hundred links between Word and Excel...

But I am looking for some type of backup system, and I was struck by this Sonicwall CDP system...

Any experience with it, good or bad...
Any thoughts on the technology...

Thanx

Answer : Problem: Expert needed for SonicWALL CDP 4440i

Looks like noone is wanting to offer anything here so I will try !!

I have not tried this directly but spoke to a friend who has. He said that it worked really well, but the biggest issue was the overhead on file access time and CPU utilisation on the servers. He didn't put it on the PC's as they have no local data anyway so was pointless. However, when put on a server it used a good 10% CPU and slowed down disk I/O to a noticable degree.

Saying that, I think it would heavily depend on the quality of your hardware in the first place. 20MB per day would be surprising against a 700GB warehouse. I would expect closer to 200MB per day change. However, I don't know your data makeup. Also, this system will monitor your ENTIRE directory structure and make copies of ANY file that changes. You can exclude files but this becomes a very admin intensive process.

Could you not get one on Eval from a friendly supplier and try it out?

I would be worried in your case as you would need to install the client on every PC and they would notice a degredation in file access times.

Hope this helps
Barny