BE2014 - Write to multiple drives

[BackupDawg]

Hi,

A simple question, but I am having difficulty locating the answer for BE2014.

I have one backup job of flat files to autoloader with 2xLTO drives - Can I get the job to stream to both LTO drives at the same time to improve the backup window?

Simples.

Thanks for any info provided,

bd

[pkh · Accepted solution]

No. BE does not have this feature

[Larry_Fine]

You can create two jobs, each using one tape drive, to optimize performance.  Depending upon the source data, it may be fairly easy to cleanly separate the data source into two jobs or it may be messy.

[Colin_Weaver]

I believe this feature is available in Net Backup and known as multi-streaming (which BE does not provide)

For Backup Exec you might be able to run 2 jobs in parallel but would have  to get clever with the selections and/or plan for where SDR needs to remain active.

Please see this NBU document for a description of the terms:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH10085

As NetBackup has it's own forum for any more information please use the NBU forum.

[BackupDawg]

Thanks for the definitive answer pkh.

I appriciate there is a work around Larry, its just that this work around has been in effect for about 5 revisions now, and although I can understand why they dont inc the feature as it undermines the "flagship netbackup", I think that the BEX userbase could do with the option... hence...

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/ideas/be2014-write-multiple-drives

Hi Colin, hope you're well, thanks for the addtional.

[Colin_Weaver]

Just as an FYI , Netbackup uses a completely different tape format from BE (BE's is based on MTF, NBUs on TAR) and as such some of the limitations may not be competely because of business decisons against flagship products (or target customer bases) but actually have technical limits between the technologies used.