Backing Up Closed Partitions?

[Stu_Packett]

I have a separate volume (L:) just for closed partitions (about 2TB).  When an open partition (K:) almost fills up (~400GB), I move the parition to L:.  On a nightly basis, the open parition (K:) is backed by using NetBackup.  It runs through that Powershell script to put the store and index in backup mode.

The problem is backing up the closed partition (L:).  When we do a our monthly backup, it takes at least a week to backup that L: volume and because the store and index are in backup mode, users cannot make any changes (archive, delete, etc) during this process.  Our users sometimes deletes from the closed partitions which is why we have to do a once-a-month backup.

So how are you all backing up your closed partitions?  I'm sure my 2TB is small compared to most of you.

EV 9.0.1 on Windows 2008 R2

[Wayne_Humphrey · Accepted solution]

If you have a monthly thats fine, remember data is not getting added to it. It can only get removed if you using exiary... So I dont see the point doing daily backups on closed partitions.

[Stu_Packett]

The bigger issue is that the monthly backup takes over a week to complete so I'm not archiving during that entire week period.  My users are upset when they cannot archive or even delete from Vault when it's in backup mode.  How do you all get around this issue?

[Wayne_Humphrey]

You can safley backup the closed partitions while Enterprise Vault is online in r/w mode.

As stated before no new data is being added, so if you backing up your open partitions in r/o mode, if you need to restore the open partition will be in sync with SQL and then you can restore the closed partition from a month agos backup and it will still be in sync.

[wandarah]

Partitions have no influence on each other and you should consider them seperate entities - and backup accordingly.

Even if you did need to restore a closed parition, worse case is only that it will contain more items than EV knows about. 

[Marco_Randall]

Since the partitions are closed, as the gentlemen have stated before me, there are no changes being made to them because they are in read only mode.  Theoretically you should not need to back them up as often as you are, so I personally would probably at most do quarterly or semi-annual backup to an offsite because if you do have data degradation on disk that only means that your the most current backups will be in a far worse condition that the data was at the point when the partitions were initially closed.

[FreKac2]

Closed partitions are not read only, I think it's wrong to use the term in regard to closed partitions.

EV will simply not add new content to a closed partition.

So expiry and/or user deletes may remove items from a closed partition (if there are no shares left).

Also you may want to consider your backup media retention settings for a closed partition backups.

E.g. so that the media isn't recycled before the next backup is made.

[Wayne_Humphrey]

post two clearly states that....

If you have a monthly thats fine, remember data is not getting added to it. It can only get removed if you using exiary... So I dont see the point doing daily backups on closed partitions.

[FreKac2]

Yep I saw :)

My response was really in regard to Marco's response which used the R/O term as in "nothing will change", which is only partly true as you said earlier.

[Marco_Randall]

I apologize, unfortunately I was speaking in terms of my own environment.  We don't allow users to delete from their vault because the biggest selling point was the compliance portion.  As FreKac posted above the Closed Partitions can and will change if you allow your users to delete data from their archives.   They will also change upon expiration, which would probably be a little less frequent for you to need to back up every month, so I stick to my previous comment of backing up quarterly or semi-annually.  My apologies for the confusion.