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VSA Hardware Requirements

Verify that the hardware requirements for Virtual Server Agent (VSA), installed on either physical or virtual machines, are met.

Components

Extra Large

Large

Medium

Small

Extra Small

CPU/RAM 1

16 CPU cores, 128 GB RAM (or 16 vCPUs/128 GB)

12 CPU cores, 64 GB RAM (or 12 vCPUs/64 GB)

8 CPU cores, 32 GB RAM (or 8 vCPUs/32 GB)

4 CPU cores, 24 GB RAM (or 4 vCPUs/24 GB)

2 CPU cores, 16 GB RAM (or 2 vCPUs/16 GB)

Front End Terabytes (FET) 2

90 TB to 120 TB

50 TB to 100 TB

25 TB to 50 TB

10 TB to 25 TB

5 TB to 10 TB

  1. Assumes latest generation CPU architecture.

  2. Front-End Terabytes (FET): Size of the data on the client computer that has to be backed up, such as files, databases, and mailboxes.

Important Considerations

  • If the VSA is installed on the MediaAgent (physical or virtual machine), then the capacity of the MediaAgent that exceeds the VSA capacity can be used for other network-based agents, including remote VSAs, up to the maximum capacity specified in Deduplication Mode.

  • When a VSA proxy with the MediaAgent package installed is used for live browse operations, the block-level browse feature uses a Least Recently Used (LRU)-based pseudomount cache in the job results directory. At least 20 GB of free space is required. When restoring large files, you can improve the performance by increasing the size of the pseudomount cache so that it does not need to be pruned frequently during restores. For optimal performance, the free space on the pseudomount cache should be at least 10% of the overall disk size for the cache plus the size of the data to be restored.

  • For virtual machines, to achieve maximum performance and scalability, reserve the recommended CPU, memory, and other resources for Commvault software processes so that they operate within the set constraints.

  • The sizing guidance provided here is applicable for direct or network connections to backup storage. If HotAdd transport mode is used for backup and recovery operations, the overall throughput will be lower.

  • When enabling File Indexing for virtual machines, the hardware requirements listed here should be increased by 25 percent. For more information, see Requirements for File Indexing for Virtual Machines.

I/O Paths

  • Dedicated I/O to datastores and backup disk.

  • Dedicated I/O should have one interface for read operations and another for writing to the backup disk.

  • The server should have the recommended I/O operations per second (IOPS) for deduplication operations, as described in Deduplication Mode.

  • For information about system requirements, see the System Requirements page for the hypervisor, under Virtualization.

  • To optimize backup and recovery operations, see the sizing guidance in Deduplication Mode.

For information about CommCell hardware specifications, see CommCell Sizing.

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