FAQ: What are the minimum bandwidth requirements Carbonite will need to transfer data?

Summary:

What are the minimum bandwidth requirements Carbonite will need to transfer data?

Solution:

The amount of bandwidth or link speed needed depends on how fast you would like the data to
be copied to a target server. Generic examples of required link speeds for transferring large
sums of data within a 24 hour period are listed below. The following examples reflect generic
data transfer rates and are not exclusive to Carbonite.

Amount of Data Amount of Time Required Link Speed

10GB 24 Hours 1 Mbps
50GB 24 Hours 5 Mbps
500GB 24 Hours 50 Mbps
1TB 12 Hours 205 Mbps

Carbonite-specific considerations:

Keep in mind that the estimates above are for static data that does not change and which is not
shared by any other service. When protecting your environment with Carbonite, live changes to
your data must be taken into consideration because Carbonite monitors and captures changes to
each byte. This process is called replication and it ensures that the data on the target server
stays up to date after the source server is initially synchronized with the target.

The examples from the table above are displayed in the table below with the amount of changed
data also taken into consideration. The more data that changes, the more throughput and/or
time you will need for replication.

Source Server Byte Amount of New Total Amount of Amount of Required Link
Changes Data Data Time Speed
1GB (in 24 hours) 10GB 11GB 24 Hours 1 Mbps
10GB (in 24 hours) 50GB 60GB 24 Hours 6 Mbps
100GB (in 24 hours) 500GB 600GB 24 Hours 60 Mbps
500GB (in 24 hours) 1TB 1.5TB 12 Hours 305 Mbps
As you can see, the necessary link speed all depends on how much data you want to transfer and
how fast you want the transfer to be. You must also know the rate of data change for the
specified period of time in order to effectively estimate the link speed required to meet your
desired goals.

These examples do not take shared connections between devices or applications into
consideration and are based on a single data set being copied from one server to another. If
other devices or applications are sharing the connection between the source and target servers,
the amount of throughput available to Carbonite will be reduced.