2nd Drive Install

[Hutch]

Hi Everyone,

We currently have a single LTO3 drive, attached to a single server.  Due to requirements for DR, we have purchased a second LTO3 drive, as well as a Robotic Tape Drive for our offsite storage location.

At present, I am wondering what is the best to configure the 2nd drive.  I would like to connect it to the existing Backup Exec server, and somehow split the currently daily backup job, to both drives for better performance.  Not sure if that is possible or not.

The second question involves data transfer from our head office, to the remote storage location (connected via 100MB Fibre).

We will install a second backup exec server in the remote site.  What would be the best way to get the data from head office, to the remote site??  I don't really want to have 2 backups running at the same time.....I would rather the main backup run (head office) and then somehow transfer that backup information to the Robotic tape library (offsite).

Hopefully I have described it properly.  Let me know if there are any questions.

[Ken_Putnam]

As long as these are stand-alone drives, you should just be able to hook up the new drive, run the hardware wizard to add it to BackupExec and then edit your jobs

Bearing in mind that a full T3 is less than 45Mbits/sec, are you sure that your WAN is 100Mb?

How much data are we talking for a nightly/weekly backup?

[infrastructure1]

I currently do what a lot of folks do. I backup my backup media...

1. I run my weekly jobs and store the data on a B2D device local to the servers.
2. I backup the B2D folder using the "Archive" setting from an offsite Media Server, to remove the B2D media when it completes and verifies.

This keeps me from needing a long time to transfer the data offsite during the original "Backup" process. It also lets me better utilize the link between my two locations during non-production hours...


This works well for me, and i suspect it would get difficult if the backup totals got too large for your pipe, but at 100MB, that'd have to be tremendous.

[Hutch]

Hi Ken,

Yes, we have a full 100MB link over all our WAN connections.  The hydro companies in our community have put down fibre line on the hydro poles (over 1000KM\622 miles and growing).  So bandwidth is not really a concern for us...in fact, we even have an option of going as high as 3GB on the link....but probably won't.....lol.

Our daily backup is running at approximately 400GB, and takes about 16 hours to run.  We will be putting all the servers on a 1GB backbone, hopefully this week, so that number should come down.

I am also thinking of using the new LTO drive, and splitting the backup, but we will have to see how that plays out.

[Hutch]

Thanks for the response.

As mentioned in my second post (just now) we will have all the servers on a 1GB backbone, so the transfer times should come way down.  That being the case, do I have to use the B2D feature??  I don't really have a server with the necessary disk space.

What I would probably do is split the backups to the local LTO drives.  Can I can use the remote location, and backup these tapes??

I was looking for the "Archive" feature that you mentioned, but didn't see anything.  Can you shed some light on the matter??

Thanks,

Adam

[infrastructure1]

The idea with using B2D in my case is to minimize backup times (I need all my backups to be withing 6 hours of one another). The B2D storage therefore allows me to gather a quick snapshot that is local to the servers being backed up. Once it completes, I can transfer the files created by B2D to my offsite location and not have to worry about the transfer speed (whether it's limited by link speed or storage device speeds).

If you feel comfortable with the link speeds, then you could use Policies to create duplicates of your backups, though I think all the templates require the initial backup to be B2D... Maybe one of the Symantec gurus could weigh in here and clarify...