Enterprise Vault backup to tape strategy ?

Rob, yes, I only backup the open Vaultstore partition, but still that took more than 5 days to finish. Hence the archiving task for journal and normal mailbox never be recent.

well, the current environment is already big as it is for the Storage Array can handle, total of 20 TB is assigned to EV

Hello John,

As you said we are only backing up open partition which is 1.2 TB and 98% Full.

I believe you always take a Full backup of Enterprise Vault Open Partition and Index Location.

You can configure a stratergy of Full + Incremental Backup which would take less time to backup the Data.

As Incremental backup after a Full backup only Backs up the New Data added.

And once you Close the partition then you can take a Full backup.

About Backing up Indexes:

Indexes and archiving is an asynchornous process, that means you can have Index location in backup mode and still archiving will happen.

So you can schedule the backup of Indexes in a spearate job, instead of having all in one Job.

Also Make sure that the throughput your getting from the Backup Application is optimum, because there could be some scenario where the throughtput of the backup job is very low due to whcih it take more time to compelte the backup job.

I hope this helps !!!

Wow, that's cool and make sense A_J,

So what do I need to do to make sure that the backup of the Open VaultStore partition is done as incremental ?

I will plan to create the separate backup job for the Index only.

Hi John,

You need to check the Backup Application HP Data Protector..

I am sure there would be an option to perform a Incremental backup..

And to know more how to configure it raise call with HP Data Protector support and you will get to kow more..

Now other Important thing i need to mention is 

you can backup using Archive Bit methos or Trigger file in EV..

To check in EV you Need to Go to the properties of the Partition and select the Backup TAB..

And accordingly you need to configure the Backup Job in the Backup application..

Hi John,

http://h20565.www2.hp.com/portal/site/hpsc/template.BINARYPORTLET/public/kb/docDisplay/resource.process/?javax.portlet.begCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=com.vignette.cachetoken&javax.portlet.rid_ba847bafb2a2d782fcbb0710b053ce01=docDisplayResURL&javax.portlet.rst_ba847bafb2a2d782fcbb0710b053ce01=wsrp-resourceState%3DdocId%253Demr_na-c01632055-3%257CdocLocale%253D&javax.portlet.tpst=ba847bafb2a2d782fcbb0710b053ce01_ws_BI&ac.admitted=1386821877772.876444892.492883150

Check the above link.. on Page No.13 it explains about Incremental Backup..

Also check this link :

Again as i said it would be good to open a case with HP and get it confgiured.

I hope this helps !!!

Cool, thanks AJ,

So in this case I have confirmed that all of the 20 VaultStore partition in my EV are using the "Archive Attribute" does that can cause the backup speed slowness issue ?

No, as i said thats the archive method which is used to backup.

You backup could be slow because of the backup application.. 

In the end, backing up 'almost all' of 1.2 Tb every time/day is going to be slow to tape... that's partly the 'tape' issue, and partly because in EV there are a LOT of files.

Try copying your partition data to somewhere, and you'll see how 'slow' it is relative to make a handful of 100 Gb files, and copying those.

It will get 'worse' when you fill out to the 20 Tb marker.  Sizing your disks in EV is not about how big you can make them, it's about how you back them up.

One of the reasons backing up vault store partitions is often slow is because they contain millions of tiny files, exactly a backup application's worst nightmare.

To get around this you could enable "Collections" which is a background process whereby EV rolls up the small files in to 10MB CAB files. this can dramatically improve backup times.

Personally I favour Smaller VS partitions, 300-500GB. Get a handle on your typical archive rate, calculate how long it would take to fill 300GB, then use a time based strategy to automate partition rollover. (This way you dont run out of drive letters, and have a more flexible Vault store)

See the Admin Guide on Collections and TECH71338 - How to configure Collections.  The usual recommendation is to run collections after a reasonable period to allow freqent access to quiesce, typically 10 - 15 days. If you users a very active it may be better to only run collections on your closed partitions

On Backup generally there are many things to consider with EV. Key points are :-

Use backup mode to prevent changes during backup, I suspect you are doing that

Ensure that the Vault stores and their associated databases are backed up together to keep them consistent.  Remeber that the VS databases represent the state of the files in the VS, if they get out of sync there can be issues.

As mentioned Indexes are not quite so critical (If all else fails they can be rebuilt from scratch) not that you would wnat to do that 

There are lots of articles on EV Backup, Admin Guide CH25, Search the KB, in particular "Enterprise Vault Whitepaper - Backing up Enterprise Vault" brings most of what you need to know in a single reference.

Obviously Backing up and maintaining your EV SQL is critical, See Tech74666 - How to automatically backup & Maintain EV SQL DBS, and Admin Guide, CH3 Day to Day ADmin > Maintain SQL DBs

Remember you cannot restore individual archives, so if anything gets damaged, you will have to restore an entire Vault Store. You need to be confident you can do this, as usually the VS represents the only copy of the data it contains.