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new backup strategy with BE 11

maurice7
Level 3

Hi. In my company we actually backup some dozens of physical servers and some VM on a scsi autoloader (tape library) connected to the server where BE 11 is installed. Data copies run by night, we use 4 weeks and 4 months rotation, and differential backups daily.

We'd like to change our strategy and migrate to a d2d2t strategy: install a core server with BE or another backup application, copy data from servers to a nas by night (through network) and then copy data from nas to tape by day. We'd like this last copy not to reduce network bandwidth during the day, so the autoloader should be connected directly to the nas, but I haven't found any solution for this purpose. I looked for Synology's and Qnap's high-end products, but I didn't found anything suitable for our scenario.

Can you give me some advices in order to reach my goal?

Thank you

9 REPLIES 9

CraigV
Moderator
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Hi,

 

Best bet is to check the BE 11d HCL. You need to find a device that is NDMP-capable and supported by BE.

Check the TN below for further information:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH48957

Thanks!

EDIT: Also, BE 11d is very old now and won't support any of the latest hardware. Best bet would be to consider an upgrade to BE 2010 R3 with SP3 at the very least, or investigate an upgrade to BE 2012 with SP2.

Sush---
Level 6
Employee Accredited Certified

Hello Maurice,

    You can run the nightly backups of your server to the backup to disk (b2d) created in the NAS device and then schedule a duplicate job to duplicate the data from NAS to the tape autoloader.

Thanks,

-Sush...

 

maurice7
Level 3

Thank you for your replies.

I looked for compatible nas but I haven't found anything suitable.

I'm thinking about another solution: what do you think if I install a backup server (windows based with one backup software installed), then I connect this server to the company network on one lan port, and the nas on another lan port creating a sort of "private network" between this server and the nas. The autoloader will connect to this server using scsi (it is connected in this way at the moment).

Then the backup server could copy data from company servers (exch, sql, fileserver, ecc) to the nas by night, and then copy data from nas to the tape library during the day, without accessing the company network because data don't exit from the backup server.

I hope you can understand. Do you think it could be a nice solution?

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

...that shouldn't be an issue, but if the NAS can do iSCSI, this gets around a lot of authentication issues.

Thanks!

Sush---
Level 6
Employee Accredited Certified

Hello Maurice,

   Yes. This new strategy should work well to achieve what you are looking for - no use of office network during day time.

 

Regards,

-Sush...

maurice7
Level 3

At home I have a very basic 2-bay Synology nas and if I remember correctly it can do iSCSI, so I think that business nas soluition can do iSCSI as well.

I have to setup one volume on the nas with iSCSI so the backup server will see a local volume connected, is it correct? (one or more volumes, obviously) I never used this protocol, is it really reliable and native compatible with at least WS 2008? (I think I will use WS2012, however)

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

One thing to bear in mind is that you should do duplicate jobs of the backups and not just backup the file system of the location containing your backusp to disk - this means teh NDMP option (initially mentioend by CraigV) is not a good idea.

You later solution of putting the NAS on iSCSI on a second network card on the media server that then has it's own LAN is therefore the better of your options.

 

BTW you stated you have VMs but did not state which techology they are hosted in and whether GRT backups of VMs is required and / or if SAN transport might be appropriate for the VMs - the answer to this might mean that 11D is not an appropriate version.

maurice7
Level 3

Hi, we use Hyper-V as virtualization environment. BTW, since we are reconsidering the entire backup system, and since 11d is quite old, we may decide to change the software. The purpose of my request was principally to design a new strategy d2d2t :)

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

Hi,

 

That is correct. I used iSCSI on the Iomega NAS's we used to use in the environment I looked after (moved onto the iSCSI version of the HP StorageWorks P2000 G3 array) as I used to get disconnects on the network links etc. This got around all of that as Windows (2008 R2 in my case) saw it as a local disk.

See my article below on this:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/using-iscsi-backup-your-environment-nas-backup-exec

Thanks!