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I have a backup server that checks changes in some folders on 100 computers twice a day and copies the changes into an incremental backup.

the problem is that checking and backing up all the 100 computers over a gigabit network takes about 1 hour and I would like it to take less time.

I was thinking about installing multiple network cards on the server and using them in windows "bridged" mode in order to increase the total bandwith and triplicate (I hope) the backup speed.

but I dont really know how "bridged" mode works internally, and that bugs me, I dont want my domain controller getting all crazy because a computer has got 3 IPs for example.

should I foresee any problems implementing this? is there a specific reason why I havent seen this setup on other servers? is there a universally accepted better solution?

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  • You should change your backup strategy so that transferring the complete files for comparison is not needed. For example, rsync is a tool that transfers only changed parts of the directory structure, there reducing bandwidth requirements.
    – Tero Kilkanen
    Aug 27, 2014 at 20:16
  • Hopefully your backup system is multi-threaded, or multi-process? If your backup process is only performing a single backup at a time in series, then link aggregation really will not help. Most link aggregation methods distribute connections between team members by address/port. So a single transfer between two hosts won't go faster, but you can have multiple connections running at a time. But that wouldn't matter since the the machines you are backing up will still not be able to saturate more than a link.
    – Zoredache
    Aug 27, 2014 at 23:47
  • tero, the file comparison is made by last modification date and file size. zore, yes, it is multi-threaded, multiple backups are made at the same time. thank you for your help anyways. c:
    – Joaquin Brandan
    Aug 28, 2014 at 21:10

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Having multiple NICs in a server is crazy common for redundancy and increased bandwidth. I don't know of any Tier 1 server hardware that doesn't have at least 2 NIC ports exactly for this. In Server 2012 and latter the OS natively support bridging/aggregating NICs. In previous versions of Windows you had to use the NIC manufacturers custom driver to accomplish the same thing.

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    Remember that you also need to configure your switch for the link aggregation.
    – Tero Kilkanen
    Aug 27, 2014 at 20:15
  • I dint know that. I will check out my switch documentation then. thanks!
    – Joaquin Brandan
    Aug 28, 2014 at 21:13
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What you're looking for is NIC teaming. Depending on the OS of the server you're using, this can be as simple as enabling it in the network card properties (Windows) or manually configuring it in the NIC config files (Linux).

If your backup environment sits on a virtual environment, HyperV and VMware will allow you to configure NIC teaming from the management console for the guest VM.

Note: If your servers are part of a virtual environment, you should try to get a backup solution that utilizes SAN snapshots. This will significantly increase the performance of your backups. Deduplication capabilities will also reduce network utilization.

Alternative: dedicate one NIC on each server as a "management" port per se, by routing all backup traffic through that NIC and all other traffic through the primary NIC. This is more complex, and requires networking experience, but doesn't require buying a new backup solution.

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  • thanks, but it's not a virtual environment (yet!)
    – Joaquin Brandan
    Aug 28, 2014 at 21:14

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