Hardware Requirements

You can deploy AhsayCBS server on a physical machine, on a virtual machine, or on a cloud environment. The server requirements are outlined in the following sections.

The hardware requirements needed to run AhsayCBS successfully are the following:

^[1]For Run on Server (Agentless) Office 365 and Cloud File backup jobs, automatic weekly Periodic Data integrity check (PDIC), Post backup data validation checks and other application processes (e.g. retention policy job, Data Integrity Check (DIC) ... etc.) are performed on the AhsayCBS server, resulting in increased processing power requirement and memory usage. It is recommended the AhsayCBS backup server should be installed with multiple sockets.

^[2]Automatic weekly Periodic Data integrity check (PDIC), Post backup data validation checks and other application processes (e.g. retention policy job, Data Integrity Check (DIC) ... etc.) are now performed by the AhsayOBM/AhsayACB client application, resulting in increased processing power requirement and memory usage.

^[3]24GB RAM or more is recommended for better performance, especially if hosting Run on Server (Agentless) Office 365 and Cloud File backup jobs. The default maximum Java memory setting (Java Heap Size) for AhsayOBM; on Windows server grade operating system (Windows 2008/2012/2016/2019) is 4096MB or 4GB. (at least 50% free memory available)

^[4]To ensure a stable and consistent backup/restore performance.

^[5] Performance and stability is dependent on the operating system platforms and / or hardware architecture.

AhsayCBS on Physical Machine

When you deploy a physical machine, please consider purchasing a more powerful machine. This will reduce the need for frequent hardware upgrades when your backup business grows, which will require services down time for hardware upgrades and data migration. If the AhsayCBS server is deployed for Microsoft 365 and/or Cloud File Run on Server (Agentless) backups, the server needs to be of a higher specification; CPU and RAM, as the backup/restore jobs will be processed by the server itself.

It is a good idea to ensure your AhsayCBS server is equipped with some redundancy features, i.e. power supply, and is connected to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply).

AhsayCBS on Virtual Environment

It is more flexible when you deploy AhsayCBS on virtual machine environment, as you can increase memory size, process cores according to the actual need.

If VM snapshots are not required, please try to delete or reduce the number of snapshots stored on your disk. Please also check on the storage requirement on virtual environment.

Additional Storage on Cloud

Besides local storage on your virtual machine, you can set up network storage, FTP/SFTP and common cloud storages (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Rackspace, Wasabi etc.) for the AhsayCBS.

AhsayCBS on Cloud Environment

To host AhsayCBS on cloud, the basic requirement would be similar with setting up a physical machine. It is more flexible when you need to increase memory size, process cores, and disk space. In addition, you will need to take the running cost of a server instance and network usage, which are considered as a hidden cost for the setup.

You can consider hosting a cloud server instance such as Amazon or Microsoft Azure.

AhsayCBS on Standby Server

To ensure you have a backup of your Backup Server in the event of any hardware issues. We recommend replicating your data on the Backup Server to the Replication Server.

In case you need to shut down your Backup Server for maintenance, you can simply switch your Replication Server to the Backup Server and change the DNS record from your current Backup Server to the Replication Server.

The hardware requirement of the Replication Server would be similar as your Backup Server and usually configured with more storage than your Backup Server.

Although both Backup Server and Replication Server are bundled in AhsayCBS, both backup and replication services are activated post installation.

It is not recommended to configure and use both services on one machine, as they will compete for system resources, i.e., CPU, memory and storage. This could affect the performance and stability of your backup service. Also, it will completely defeat the purpose of the Replication Server as a backup or standby server to your Backup Server.

Please also check the details on the replication setup.