cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Netbackup Flashbackup or Agent based backups

yobole
Level 6

Hi Guys

 

Need some advice on backup solution regarding Netbackup . We have a 2TB volume on a file server and have installed Netbackup 2.6.0.3 running server 2012. the 2TB of data has loads of small files and also Enterprise vault place holders so windows journal can’t really kick in . We have accelerator and client dedupe enabled

Using windows based backups it’s taking 23hrs to backup. Someone suggested using flash backups? We cannot use off host backups as the Media Server is a Netbackup 5230 appliance and does not support iSCSI

Really need to bring the backup window down as I have a similar volume of 6TB to also migrate into Netbackup

 

Kind Regards

 

7 REPLIES 7

RiaanBadenhorst
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

You can try flashbackup for windows. It will back up the underlying FS blocks. If your disk has a relatively good performance then it will be fairly quick.

 

Have you tried using accelerator with out change journal. I've seen it go faster when its disabled in some instances.

 

Also, you can run collections on EV volumes so that the small files are collected and placed into CAB files (zipped up so to speak).

yobole
Level 6

Ran a couple of test with Flash backup on a 1TB data filled volume and not too sure I understand the logs 

I ran two full backup with Media -side dedupe enabled and got the following for both Flashbackn and Agent bakcups 

 

FlashBackup

Time Taken ( hrs)

Average Speed (KB per second)

Other stats in logs

8.33

70398

scanned: 2150144522 KB, CR sent: 19967712 KB, CR sent over FC: 0 KB, dedup: 99.1%, cache disabled

7.43

78063

scanned: 2150144535 KB, CR sent: 14447986 KB, CR sent over FC: 0 KB, dedup: 99.3%, cache hits: 17404382 (98.9%), rebased: 13151 (0.1%)

If so I‘m confused why on a full backup it says:

scanned:               2150144522 KB = 2TB

sent:                       19967712 KB = 19GB = approx. 0.009%

to me this implies that the de-duplication was done on the client side ??? 

 

Agentbased Backup 

Time(hrs)

Average Speed (KB per second)

Other stats in logs

7.39

36288

scanned: 995909378 KB, CR sent: 1148058 KB, CR sent over FC: 0 KB, dedup: 99.9%, cache disabled

1.42

164579

scanned: 995909378 KB, CR sent: 764916 KB, CR sent over FC: 0 KB, dedup: 99.9%, cache disabled

 

Any thoughts or explanation on theses stats 

 

 

RiaanBadenhorst
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

It backed up 2TB because your volume is 2TB (50% used). Remember I said it backs up the file system blocks, not the files that reside on the file system.

 

CR sent meant that only that amount was transferred between the deduplication engine and the content router (CR).

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

Flashbackup is better suited for 'nearly full' volumes.

The block-level backup is described in the Snapshot Client manual.

yobole
Level 6

The main issue is we were wondering whats the best way to backup the following data in the senario below 

 

  • 2 x Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 in Microsoft Failover Cluster (COL1FILE01 and (COL2FILE01)
  • Running clustered file server role (File Server for General Use) in Active/Active configuration (one file server role on each node)
  • Shared volumes on HP Lefthand P4530 storage assigned as follows:
    • 1 x 1GB Quorum disk assigned to core cluster resource
    • FILE01 (virtual hostname)
      • 1 x 4TB volume
      • 1 x 5TB volume
      • 1 x 3TB volume
      • 1 x 1.5TB volume
      • 1 x 1TB volume
      • 1 x 100 GB volume
    • FILE02 (virtual hostname)
      • 1 x 20TB volume
  • Enterprise vault FSA agent installed as a cluster resource on each file server role

yobole
Level 6

What the the main Pros and Cons with Flashbackups and Traditional Accelerator MSDP backups

  1. Flashbackup is good, but bear in mind that entire volume needs to be backed up at block-level (even unused blocks) with the size of the new file volume I don’t think we have the space
  2. We can run Multiple stream using Agent backup and cannt do that on flashbackup
  3. The Agent backup first full backup may take a while to build the track oogs depending on changes , accelerator  in this can be reduced
  4. Restores times are far better with Agent backus than flash backups

Are all the above correct ? i really need to compile a list for my manager so we can decided whch way to proceed

RiaanBadenhorst
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

4. You should get better performance when restoring with FlashBackup (if restoring everything). Otherwise it would be pretty much the same.