Compression Type
Hi,
I am a newbie to backups and have a simple query on Compression Type. We have symantec backup exec 2010 and a Dell LTO5 tape library. I want to backup a drive(2 TB) on a server. The files are index files. What is the compression type from below 4 which i need to use to complete the job in the fastest time ?
1] None
2] Software
3] Hardware [if available,otherwise none]
4] Hardware[if available,otherwise software]
Thanks !
Option #3 is the most common setting in 90%+ of environments. None of the options will generally speed up backups.
Most any tape drive built in the last 10yrs can do compression in hardware. And you want to leverage that if you can.
Now the dirty secret to LTO5 is that you NEED to write at a minimum speed in your case around 50MB/s. Since you are using hardware compression, you must actually write to that drive at a minimum of around 60MB/s (3600MB/min) since you are getting 1.2:1 compression already.
Odds are you are not getting anywhere close to that speed, and are now shoe-shining that tape and the drive, causing premature wear and failure.
The only way to aleviate that, is to write to disk FIRST, then duplicate off to tape. Of course your disk has to be able to read at 60+MB/s. Which isn't that hard with a RAID5/RAID6 array with at least 7 spindles.