Snapshot of server backup option ? 1

[protos]

Is there a way Backup Exec or another Veritas product
can do a "snapshot" backup
like Ultrabac claims ??

We need to do some type of snapshot of servers so it will make restores faster if a whole server goes down.

I also heard of something called
Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)

anyone else heard of it ?

 

[johnny99]

Depending on our platform Veritas Netbackup Datacenter has support for some of the things you want.
Some hardware vendors also have "Snap Shot" build into their disksystems (eg. EMC, StorageTek, HDS)

When you talk about fast, what is fast?
What are your recovery needs?
What platform are we talking about?
How much data?
What kind of data?

 

[protos]

Storagetek, EMC, HDS has built in "snapshots" in their disksystems, what do you mean by that ??

Fast, i mean like an hour or 2 at the least to recover a server back to original state before the crash.
Thats what we need for recovery.
Were going to use Backup Exec for "file system backups"
like user drives, shares, exchange mailboxes

Were on win2k
About 60gig data nightly on the "file system" backup

Thanks

 

[johnny99]

We use StorageTek disks.
If you close all programs that use a given volume we can greate a total copy of the LUN in a few seconds to another LUN on the disksystem.
HDS and EMC have features like that.

If the 60 GB of data you have is an SQL og Exchange database or a lot of big files you could restore 60 GB in less then 2 hours. If it's a million small files it's a different story.
It also depends on your backup hardware and software.

We backup our 38 GB Exchange database in around 45 min if I remember right.

We use Veritas Netbackup Datacenter and the tapedrives are StorageTek 9940B

 

[protos]

johnny,

how do you backup the exchange db while its open/online ??
we also use veritas backup exec to backup that option for exchange.

so you can restore your whole server(os, db) in about 2 hours ??

how is your netbackup and tapedrives setup to backup the 38gb Exchange db ??
do u use a Nas ?
were thinking about that also, so your StorageTek helps w/ the 2 hour 38gb backup ?

 

[protos]

sorry,
whats the StorageTek product you use called ??

thanks so much

 

[johnny99]

We use Veritas Netbackup Datacenter and the Exchange client.
If you want to do "snap shot" of an exchange server you will have to stop the services, take the "snap shot" and then start the services again.
When you have a backup software and the right client you can backup the exchange database online.

The backup speed of our Exchange backup is around 15 MB/s, but on the other hand have never done anything to optimize it.

The setup is:

Tape STK9940B FC
Brocade Silkworm 2800 Switches
Qlogic 2200F HBA's
Media server: Dell 6450 - 2 x 700 Mhz Xeon 1 MB 1 GB ram
Exchange server: Dell 6450 - 4 x 700 Mhz Xeon 1 MB 2 GB ram
LAN: Extreme BlackDiamond 6808
Backup is taken over the LAN from the Exchange server to the media server and then over the Brocade switches to the tapedrives.
Disksubsystem is StorageTek SVA9500 (current model is called V2X) with 16 FC channels and 4 GB cache

This could be done faster if I installed a media server directly on the exchange box, but I don't want to spend the money on that.

We use SAN not NAS. In general I don't think NAS is good for anything except fileservers, but that is just what I think.

By the way, Backup Exec and Netbackup Datacenter only realy have 2 things in common: Both are backup products and both are owned by Veritas.

If you want more specific advice you are welcome to write to me at: joe@spamcop.net