BE12.5 small files delaying backup

[SandraM]

hi to all

I have a scenario where i need to do a full backup each night of a server to tape (LTO4), the server runs a database which has thousands of tiny files associated to it, which slows the backup down massively, and is taking nearly 24 hours to run. i have optimised the backup as suggested in other posts, but need a proper solution.

Would running two jobs side by side backing up the database files to disc, then backing up the backup to disc- to tape work? if so how would this impact recovery?

does anyone have any clever ideas other than incremental backups?

thanks

SandraM

[C-Ray]

How did you setup your policy? Did you just setup an All_Local_Drives policy? or did you break up the drives/file directories?

Something like this...

C:\<folder1>

C:\<folder2>

C:\<folder3>

Can you turn on multistreaming? That will help as well.

[lmosla]

Make sure that the database files are excluded from any virus scan. What are the remote and media server versions?

[teiva-boy]

C-Ray you're speaking NetBackup nomenclature and features.  BackupExec has NO multi-streaming features, it's all serial.  It's been this way from the begining of time.

Backing up to disk then cloning off to tape is usally an improvement.  But only a test can verify that.  

LTO4 MUST be able to receive data at 24MB/s minimum, in BackupExec speak, greater than 1500MB/min.  If you can't reach those speeds, you have to write to disk first, then duplicate to tape.

[C-Ray]

Figured that was the case, thought I would ask anyways. :)

[pkh]

With a lot of small files, you are unlikely to get a lot of speed with BE.  You might want to take a look at SSR (Symantec System Recovery) which can do image-based backups.  It would be a lot faster than using BE.

[CraigV]

...the other option is to try backing up the small files to disk and then duplicating to tape. Less stop/start on the tape drive. When duplicating larger files it would run at a faster speed.

Thanks!