Looking to incorporate PureDisk

[Casey_King]

We've been working towards a DD environment and have had many meetings with various vendors, not to mention the recent buy-out that put some conversations on hold.  I am currently licensed for NB Enterprise 6.5 and started reading about NB PureDisk, and this looks like it might be a good solution, but only a 90% solution.  Our environment includes

Windows 2000/2003
Linux
AIX 5.x
Exchange 2003/2007
SQL 2000/2005
Oracle
VMWare

According to the PD datasheet, we can utilize PD as a client side, in-line DD, across our WMWare servers, exchange, sql, windows, and aix, but I am concerned about the support of PD DD for our oracle databases since is it not listed as having a supported agent within PD.  I am taking suggestions on how to deploy PD for the supported solutions, as well as thoughts on how to get DD on oracle databases.  I was looking into the Symantec OST that works with another vendor, but I am not sure if we want to go that route until we see what comes from the buy-out....

Thoughts?

[Todd_Ryan]

Casey,
I was glad to find your post, we're going through almost the same exercise, with just about the same environment (replace "Oracle" with "Informix" and it's identical), and running in to the same "close but no cigar" conclusion. I'd love to share findings with you if you'd be interested, we can do a quick conference call or email.
In a nutshell, we have pretty heavily investigated solutions from EMC (Avamar and their VTL), IBM (Diligent / NSeries), Data Domain, as well as considerations for sticking with either NetBackup or TSM (we own both).
If you're interested let me know and I'll send you my phone number and email.

[Abesama]

Are you looking for DD because of performance (bandwidth/backup time) or to reduce disk usage?

If you want DD for performance, then DD would need to happen on the client side - like Puredisk, yes.
Then a full stop there - no more Oracle support, unless DBA agrees with dump/snapshot backups.

If you want DD for disk space efficiencies, you can use NBU Enterprise Server (which you have license) which has Oracle agent, and use PureDisk as backend disu storage unit.

Most likely all this is what you know already
:-)

One thing is - once you start using DD, although it may seem all-good-no-bad produt, there is actually a down side.

For example, we've been running PureDisk, and the restore performance has been same or lower than NetBackup.

Also, demo-pilot will not really show you the real world issues that you might encounter after you run it for a year or two ... to us, the cleanup and catalog maintenance has been some trouble from our PureDisk servers.

Abraham

[Rockey_Wen]

 "If you want DD for disk space efficiencies, you can use NBU Enterprise Server (which you have license) which has Oracle agent, and use PureDisk as backend disu storage unit."

Currently, our Oracle database servers got Oracle agents installed, and backup policies are based on RMAN scripts.  In the RMAN scripts, we are currently address the backup stream to tape, which means device type = "sbt_type".  What kind of modification  should I do if I want to re-direct backup stream to PureDisk storage unit?  Can I treat the Puredisk storage unit as local disks and set device type to "DISK"?


Thanks, 

Rockey Wen

[sam_ly1]

Hi

Puredisk 6.6 will ship with an Rman agent

You can register to join the FA program and test the new rman agent.
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/326833.htm

Oracle rman backups to Netbackup PDDO STU
there is no change to the rman script, Netbackup will save the backup just the same as a basic disk backup.

Thanks
Sam

[Abesama]

From the FA program page I see no other DBs are mentioned.

Do we have any page with PD roadmap for the future releases?

A

[T_N]

me either, my company wants to use Avamar to replace Netbackup 6.5.3, they said avamar is best backup software for VMware? Any suggestion about it? Use Netbackup with DD to backup & deduplicate VMware or Avamar to backup VMwares. Thanks.

[gc_bus]

Just a note to say that (currently) Oracle RMAN style backups via Netbackup to Puredisk storage have poor de-dupe rates in our own testing. I believe this is being addressed in the New Year (i.e. 2010) by Symantec.

[teiva-boy]

 PureDisk is perfectly capable of backing up VMware, and getting good rates.  Combined with NetBackup which you already have, it's a winning combination.

Add to that, PureDisk is like 1/2 the cost of Avamar or less in many cases.

[dedupe69]

For VMware backups Avamar is absolutely the best bet.  Look at what VMware themselves use - Avamar.  Also the cost argument, Puredisk software may be cheaper but with Avamar:

- no agent costs, unlimited for free.
- all hardware & software included. support is easy and the associated costs are dramatically reduced.

with PD how much hardware infrastructure do you need? Servers, Storage etc.  Over a 3yr TCO, Avamar always comes out cheaper.

and that's before we even talk about PD's awful performance....