Support for multi-streaming?

[Patrick_Feltz]

I tried searching and didn't find any results that meant anything to me. 

My manager sent me an email that said

 "find out if Backup Exec can do multiple backup streams per LUN?  So if we spread our SQL DBs across multiple LUNs we could do multiple DB backups at the same time and reduce our backup window."

In my searches, I haven't been able to find much concrete information about "multi-stream" in the Admin Guide.  I searched the pdf and it came up five times each time was the sentence "Note Only data from the first stream displays for multi-stream jobs."

Since I'm not sure what multi-streaming is I'll explain the problem we are trying to solve... 

I have a need to backup approximately 1 terabyte of data as fast as possible.

The data is in multiple MS SQL databases about 40 or so.  Running Backup Exec 11D on a backup server that is connected to the EMC 500 SAN by dual fiber. 

I don't even know if Backup exec is the best solution for this but thought I'd ask.. 

Thanks in advance for any help that I get. 

[Francois_Steyl]

Hi Patrick.

The term streaming is sometimes confusing. What your boss is trying to ask is one of the following.

1.

Think of C:\, D:\, E:\, F:\ each being an "object". A normal backup will back this up in "serial". In other words it will first backup C:\, then D:\, then E:\, and then F:\. - This is in comparison called "non-streaming".

Streaming would mean that

[Francois_Steyl]

Hi Patrick.

The term streaming is sometimes confusing. What your boss is trying to ask is one of the following.

1. Streaming

Think of C:\, D:\, E:\, F:\ each being an "object". A normal backup will back this up in "serial". In other words it will first backup C:\, then D:\, then E:\, and then F:\. - This is in comparison called "non-streaming".

Streaming would mean that

[Francois_Steyl]

Hi Patrick.

The term streaming is sometimes confusing. What your boss is trying to ask is one of the following.

1. Streaming is backing

Think of C:\, D:\, E:\, F:\ each being an "object". A normal backup will back this up in "serial". In other words it will first backup C:\, then D:\, then E:\, and then F:\. - This is in comparison called "non-streaming".

Streaming would mean that

[Francois_Steyl]

My browser is going absolutely moggy!!!! It is posting my thread before I can finish!!!!!! Will try posting tomorrow from another PC.

[Ken_Putnam]

Quick answer is "NO", as Francois says

Any job writing to tape will write one "source at a time"

For B2D folders you can specify up to 16 concurrent operations to the folder, so you could run 16 different jobs all pointed at the same B2D folder

or you could run as many jobs as you wish to separate tape drives or different B2D folders  Remember that Backupexec tends to a RAM hungry beast, so the media server would need to have quite a bit more than the minimum requirements

Depending on your network topgraphy, you could very easily saturate the network if you get too many jobs going at the same time 

[Patrick_Feltz]

Thansk for your help.  I was reading your posts and wanted to point out that over 800 gigabytes of data is on the D:\  drive so streamin in that sense would not gain us anything.

is it possible to stream the data from specific LUNs on the SAN?

Thanks again,

[Francois_Steyl]

What you might want to try is to setup multiple jobs. Start by splitting your databases into 2. Create 1 x Job with half of the Databases, and a 2nd Job with the other half. Have one of the jobs kick off a couple of minutes later. This might give you a manual “streaming” effect. If successful, you might even try splitting it further.

Like Ken said, just keep an eye on memory usage. You might kill your network / Server.

Can you maybe re-phrase “is it possible to stream the data from specific LUNs on the SAN?”? I am not sure what you mean.