Backup of Dedupe Store to Tape

[WMFS]

Is it possible to backup a Dedupe store to tape while the store has jobs writing to it?

[CraigV]

Hi,

It probably is, but I wouldn't advise it. The dedupe store's database will be writing changes to it while you're backing up from it...not a recommended action to be taking at the same time.

As things stand, your backup of the dedupe folder is also going to rehydrate all that data to the original size when backing up to tape, so take that into account.

Thanks!

[Colin_Weaver]

You can backup the DeDup Store via the Shadow Copy Components. However it is still recommended to duplicate the data in the DeDup Store to tape as then you can restore directly from tape and not need to recover the DeDup store itself before you can restore your data.

Of and you can't do an Incremental backup of the Shadow Copy so it could be a very large backup if you do backup the DeDup store that way.

[WMFS]

Thanks for the info. 

This is surely an issue as the backup of the dedupe store to tape is likely to take a long period of time (in our case 37 hours to LTO4 for only a 3.5TB store), which means as the dedupe store grows the backup window for our normal jobs reduces and some days will not be possible.  Am I correct in my understanding?

[CraigV]

Hi,

If you're backing up your dedupe on a daily basis, then yes, you'll end up overrunning and missing some backups. I'd only backup the dedupe store on a weekend to be honest as a result.

Thanks!