What is the best way to backup our huge file server?

[Gonzouk]

Hello,

We are using BE 2010 R2 server with an LTO4 and LTO3 tape drive attached.  We also have a Windows 2008 R2 (VMware virtual server) but the paritions are iSCSI connected disks via our Dell Equallogic SAN (not VMFS).  It has 4 partitions of 2.5TB each with 1.5TB used on each.

What is the best way to backup this server?  I need to do a full backup at the weekend and differential in the week but there so many option like off-host backups, software/hardware snapshots etc.  With about 6TB to backup what is hte quickest method?

Thanks

[Engineer_007]

Hello,

Greetings!

You'll have to backup the data in legacy fashion, by installing the remote agent on the the 2008 R2 server.

Since its a 2008 R2 server all the backups are snapshot based regardless of selecting the snapshot provider (AOFO) feature, 

You don't have to select the Off-host backup feature because its primarily used for Application servers like Exchange, to transfer the processing load over to the Backup server.

Since Backup exec is a file level backup application the speed totally depends on the Hardware and network bandwidth you have allocated for it.

The fastest way to backup 6TB information is through a block level backup software like "Backup exec system recovery" which takes a backup of the entire volume, however it doesn't support Tape devices.

So at this point to acheive better throughput i would suggest you to allocate better resources on the backup exec server. for E.g (N/W card, LTO 4 Drives, and good amount of Ram)

Please Mark this as resolved if that answers your query...

Thanks!

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

Hi there,

A couple of ways around this:

1. Deduplication - The initial backup will be large, but subsequent backups will be smaller as the deduplication DB is built up. The only issue here will be how you duplicate that store...if you do so to tape, it will rehydrate that data, but at least you can do this over a weekend. Hardware resources here on your media server are also an issue...at least 1GB RAM per TB of data you back up, and it needs to be Windows Server 2008 x64.

2. Splitting your jobs up - With 2 tape drives, you don't need additional LEO licenses. You can split your jobs up, sending the larger of the jobs to the LTO4 drive, and letting the LTO3 drive handle a smaller load. The issue here is swopping out tapes if you don't get a compression ratio that is high enough. At least this way you can POSSIBLY fit everything onto 1 tape, and run 2 consecutive jobs to the same media server. This assumes you're using FULL backups.

3. Splitting your jobs up using DIFF/INC backups - split your jobs up anyway. Send the larger of the 2 to the LTO4 drive, with the LTO3 handling the smaller load. If you have disk space, send it to disk first, and then stream off to tape. Doing so means a bit faster backup times each day during the week using DIFF/INC and then also allows you to stream that data to tape once it completes at night. This leaves a FULL backup for the weekend.

Cheers!