Transitioning from tapes to NAS

[PhilM]

Recently our tape drive broke and we decided to replace it with a NAS (Network Attached Storage) server and simply place the NAS at our offsite building location and make backups accross the network using Backup Exec 2010.  We bought the Netgear ReadyNAS 1500.  I asked the vendor lots of questions and it sounded like the NAS would work for all of our requirements.  The basic requirment is to allow offsite storage for DR purposes.

With our old tape system we rotated 5 daily, 5 weekly, 6 monthly, and made annual archives.  How could I replicate this with Backup Exec using a NAS?  I found a Best Practices article that specifically recommended not placing more than one Backup-to-Disk per volume.  But maybe since this NAS is dedicated for backups that will be OK?  We will never be running more than one backup at the same time.

Should I create a Backup-to-Disk folder for Daily/Weekly/Monthly?  I haven't found a way to save the last 5 Dailys though. 

Do you think it is best to choose a maximum size (I chose 150GB) to decrease fragmentation?

One capability I thought would work is to setup a snapshot on the NAS and keep 5 snapshots of the daily Backup-to-Disk.  But now that I got the NAS I see it only supports a single volume snapshot lasting 24 hours, which I don't think will help much.

Can Backup-to-Disk use encryption the same as I used to encrypt my tapes?

Is there some other setup I should use?

Phil

[Kiran_Bandi · Accepted solution]

Should I create a Backup-to-Disk folder for Daily/Weekly/Monthly?

Yes create 3 B2D folders and create 3 media sets. Choose proper OPP and AP.

Media Set OPP: 5 Days AP: None

Change the media management setting to Overwrite recyclable media in target media set before overwriting scratch media.

Configure the B2D jobs to start as Overwrite Only.

With these settings 5 bkf files will be created in your B2D folder (1 for each day). And in the next cycle BE starts overwriting the oldest among the recyclable media. No need of snapshots at NAS level.

Can Backup-to-Disk use encryption the same as I used to encrypt my tapes?

Yes.

Do you think it is best to choose a maximum size (I chose 150GB) to decrease fragmentation?

Are you choosing Allocate maximum sixe to backup to disk file setting? If your backups are 170 GB of Size, two bkf files of size 150 GB will be created. Depends on your backup sizes you can decide on this. AS you are saving backups across network it is better to have lesser value.

Regards...

[pkh]

Recently our tape drive broke and we decided to replace it with a NAS (Network Attached Storage) server and simply place the NAS at our offsite building location and make backups accross the network using Backup Exec 2010. 

Unless you have a big bandwidth, this is not going to work.  You would probably get a lot of time-outs and job failure.  It is better to place your NAS at the same location as your media server.

Should I create a Backup-to-Disk folder for Daily/Weekly/Monthly?

You don't have to create seperate folders for your your jobs.  You can just use one B2D folders.  However, you do need to create different media sets for your jobs since their data retention periods will be different

Can Backup-to-Disk use encryption the same as I used to encrypt my tapes?

You cannot use hardware encryption because disk does not support hardware encryption.  You have to use software encryption.

Do you think it is best to choose a maximum size (I chose 150GB) to decrease fragmentation?

This will not really decrease fragmentation unless you also choose to allocate maximum.  Otherwise if your backup is only 15GB then a 15GB .bkf file is created.  Note that allocating a big file size will take longer.