Forum Discussion

ikmon2000's avatar
ikmon2000
Level 3
8 years ago

Backup times

I am currently backing up and verifying 4.2 TB of data from multiple Windows servers using BE 12.5 and a Dell library with an LTO 4 drive. This job is using 3 tapes and taking about 31 hrs to complete.


Does this seem to be right from a time standpoint? Is there anyway to improve the time? Would upgrading to an LTO 5 drive be a worthwhile upgrade and if so would the LTO 5 drive still read and restore from my LTO 4 media?

Thanks

12.x and Earlier
Windows Server 2003
  • Colin_Weaver's avatar
    Colin_Weaver
    8 years ago

    If you are concerned about backup window lengths when writing to tape, then maybe you should consider:

    - writing to disk first and then duplicating to tape as necessary (note GRT restores from tape need disk space anyway so if you are doing any backups which use GRT and don't have the disk space you may already have a problem)

    - investing in a tape library with 2 tape drives in order to do parallel write operations (by starting 2 jobs at the same time against different resources)

    - both of the above in combination to both decrease the length of the initial backup window and to also decrease how long the duplicate phase takes (again 2 separate job definitions for different resources will be needed)

  • Hopsnbarley's avatar
    Hopsnbarley
    Level 4
    8 years ago

    Backup speeds is very dependent on so many things. Things like network speed/traffic, file sizes, types of data (i.e. Exchange, SQL etc),other programs running on the hosts,  and of course the backup hardware.  There are also some types of backup jobs that tend to take longer. An example would be a GRT enabled backup.

    While upgrading your tape hardware may improve the overall  throughput, I tend to doubt it will be that much of a difference. As far as tape compatiblility between LTO4 and LTO5 (LTO 5 reading LTO4 tapes) typicallythe answer would be yes. But you would need to ensure that with the tape drive manufacturer. 

    The other item you would need to consider is that Backup Exec 12.5 is pretty old software and may not be certified on newer tape hardware.  In that case you would probably need to upgrade to the current version of Backup Exec 16. 

     

     

     

     

  • Colin_Weaver's avatar
    Colin_Weaver
    Moderator
    8 years ago

    If you are concerned about backup window lengths when writing to tape, then maybe you should consider:

    - writing to disk first and then duplicating to tape as necessary (note GRT restores from tape need disk space anyway so if you are doing any backups which use GRT and don't have the disk space you may already have a problem)

    - investing in a tape library with 2 tape drives in order to do parallel write operations (by starting 2 jobs at the same time against different resources)

    - both of the above in combination to both decrease the length of the initial backup window and to also decrease how long the duplicate phase takes (again 2 separate job definitions for different resources will be needed)