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WAN Accelerators

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To enable WAN acceleration and data deduplication technologies, you must deploy a pair of WAN accelerators in your backup infrastructure.

One WAN accelerator is deployed on the source site, closer to the source backup repository or source host.
The other WAN accelerator is deployed on the target site, closer to the target backup repository or target host.

Technically, WAN accelerators add a new layer in the backup infrastructure — between the Veeam Data Mover Service on the source side and the Veeam Data Mover Service on the target side.

WAN Accelerators

WAN accelerators are dedicated components responsible for global data caching and data deduplication. On each WAN accelerator, Veeam Backup & Replication installs the Veeam WAN Accelerator Service responsible for WAN acceleration tasks.

On each WAN accelerator Veeam Backup & Replication creates the VeeamWAN folder containing the following data:

The VeeamWAN folder on the source WAN accelerator stores files with digests required for global deduplication. For more information, see How WAN Acceleration Works.
The VeeamWAN folder on the target WAN accelerator stores global cache data.

To create a WAN accelerator, you need to assign the WAN accelerator role to a specific machine. You can use any 64-bit Windows-based machine in your environment, either physical or virtual. You can even assign the WAN accelerator role to the existing backup proxies and backup repositories.

The machine that will perform the WAN accelerator role must have enough free disk space to store digest or global cache data. For more information, see WAN Accelerator Sizing.