New Backup Plan-Opinions Needed

[TheStressFactor]

Hello all,

I recently started with a new company and there are quite a few backup issues to be looked at.

Right now we have our main site and 15 remotes sites. The 15 remote sites use Legato Replistore to mirror their data over to a storage device here. That data as well as data from the main site is backed up each night...we do a full over the weekend and an incremental throughout the week.

Right now the full is spanning to 4 tapes and is taking the whole weekend to run...we are 3/4 a terabyte and growing. We are using LTO 200/400 tapes.

I am trying to weigh our options but I wanted some opinions. My past experiences has never went much beyong using a single tape but now its a whole new ballgame.

I am thinking of using one of the devices from overland with the 9.6 terabyte storage. I am not too sure how it all works though. The storage device would hook up to a server that would run backup software? Does anyon have any good white papers disk to disk to tape?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Patrick

 

[birky]

Hi

Backing up to disk would shorten your backup window by quite a bit.

We use CommVault Galaxy to backup our data to disk and do what they call an 'auxiliary copy' to tape (which is a copy of the backup) so then we have a couple of copies.

You don't really need anything special for the disk....take a look at nexsan disk, they start at about £1700 for 1.2TB and go up to about 12TB for around £28000 per enclosure.

You can get a whitepaper for d2d (based on CommVault though) from here

http://www.pinnacledata.co.uk/qinetix.html

just click on the whitepapers link.

 

[TheStressFactor]

birky thank you so much.

Just a few more questions...the storage device hooks up to a server which runs an os..correct? Is the os a standard os or something special that interacts with the tape device?

If it is a standard os does it have special software for the storage device or does it use veritas or another backup program with it?

 

[birky]

no problem

The storage device can either be SCSI attached to the server or network attached dependant on what you get.

Using disk or tape as your storage is virtually the same steps....you would first ensure that the OS can see the disk/tape library & then use the backup software to configure the disk or tape as a storage location with your backup software. The backup software would then handle the movement of data to the storage whether it be disk/tape or both.

What backup software do you currently use?...a full weekend to backup less than a TB is a heck of a long time.

 

[TheStressFactor]

we currently use brightstor arcserve

how exactly does network attached storage work? you hook the storage device up to the network and give it an ip?

also you mentioned using scsi to attach to the server..ive been reading stuff about fibre and fibre channel...what is this?

so basically you use the software and it backs it up to disk...so if someone wants a file restored I can just go to the disk and get it without going to tape

I was going to do a disk to disk to tape scheme...so would I just backup my data during the day then?

sorry if I sound ignorant about all this but I really am...i appreciate your help

 

[birky]

To find out more about fibre then you had best do some research on Google about SAN's (Storage Area Networks).

You have basicaly got the NAS bit correct in your previous post....all depends what kind of storage you buy...for your amount of data I would just go with a disk array, scsi attached to the media server (or whatever arcserve calls it...the server that controls the storage for your backups)

Your backups would firstly backup your data to the disk storage (which would then be the primary copy), you could then do a copy to tape (which would then be your secondary copy)...if a restore was needed then you would be restoring straight from your primary copy on the disk....if the backup software couldn't find the primary copy it could then look to the secondary copy on tape instead.

You would still do your backups out of hours as usual.

I am taking this from a CommVault way of working because I have never used arcserve....are you in the UK?

There are lots of different ways of configuring backups depending on the software you use and your environment...whats good for one environment may not be the best solution for another.