Need to keep 2 backups of each server on disk.

[Mr_A]

Hi guys,

I have had a fairly unique request from a customer who wants to ensure that they always maintain 2 copies of each server to disk at all times, despite the fact that some servers are backed up very infrequently, whereas others are backed up nightly.  

They currently have version 2010, and we are about to upgrade them to BE2012, so I thought I could better leverage the 'per server' approach, however I'm unclear on how I'd setup the media pools.   The customer wants to maintain 2 copies, because they don't want to be caught short should the backups be in the process of overwriting older backups.   Ideally they want each server to overwrite only it's 2 copies (oldest first) if that's possible.  Any thoughts?  Sounds like I might have to setup separate disk devices, media pools & so forth but I was wondering if there was a better way. Let me know what you think.

cheers

Anthony 

[pkh · Accepted solution]

You would need the following

1) two seperate disks for each set of backups.

2) 2 media sets if the retention periods for the two backups are different.  Otherwise, you need only 1

3) set up your jobs using a policy with 2 templates, one for backup and another to duplicate this backup to another disk.  Make sure tht your jobs specify overwrite and not append.

[Mr_A]

Thanks for your reply.  So just to give you more detail, they've got around 30 servers.  The Monthly, weekly, daily backups are all subsets of each others, so some are backed up far less than others (monthly, weekly etc).  Currently the customer has a single disk device with limited capacity, and can only manage a single copy of all servers.  The retention time on the pool is small, and we are having to run exception jobs to ensure all servers reside on disk (effectively all servers are backed up to disk each night).  But our plan is to get away from that with BE2012.

With your proposed setup, I presume your talking about 2 separate disk devices for all servers, not separate ones created for each server?

With regards to media sets I was thinking of having the first one with a short retention period for the initial backup (12 hours or so), then a second media set for each server with a retention time matching the backup job (monthly, weekly etc) - so I think that aligns with your point 2.

My only concern is this customer also currently doing a duplicate to tape, and still wants this to remain in place.  Effectively I'd be doing a B2D2D2T ... or a B2D2T2D perhaps even.   I guess we can't have our cake and eat it!

cheers

Anthony

[pkh]

You would need at least 2 disk so that the failure of one disk does not affect the other.  Utimately the number of disks depends on the size of your backups and how long do you want to retain them.

Personally, I don't see much point in retaining a backup for only 12 hours.  It is as good as useless.

You should be doing B2D2D2T and not B2D2T2D.  If your media server can handle it, you can duplicate to disk and tape at the same time.