Backup infrastructures that are utilizing disks to backup data on premise and not using tapes to store copies offsite must replicate their data to a disaster recovery or secondary site, in order to mitigate the risks of losing data when the primary sites go away due to disaster.

Popular backup solutions such as Avamar usually include replication feature that logically copies data from one or more source backup servers to a destination or target backup server. In addition, Avamar uses deduplication methodology at the source server, transferring unique data only to the target server and encrypting the data during transmission. Avamar replication is accomplished via asynchronous IP transfer and can be configured to run on a scheduled basis.

Some of the best practices of Avamar replication are:

1. Replicate during low backup activity and outside of the routine server maintenance
2. Replicate all backup clients
3. Avoid filtering backup data because it may inadvertently miss backups
4. Ensure available bandwidth is adequate to replicate all daily changed data within a 4-hour period.