Backing up large fileserver, best practice?

[Emanuele_Pola]

Hi,

i've a problem  my customer fileserver (2 server win 2003 EE x64 sp2 with mscs cluster) is growing up very fast, today the number of files is ~3.500.000 and the total amount of data is ~700GB.

The master+media server is windows 2003 x32 std sp2.

All netbackup version are 6.5.

May i use flashbackup to make faster backup? anyone is using it and may share impression and or prblems?

Regards

[bbizoff]

What type of target are you backing up to? Disk, VTL, or Tape?  Probably the only way around backing up that many files in a short amount of time is if you implement a snapshot method.  What type of storage do these files exist on today?

[Emanuele_Pola]

Hi,

i'm using ibm 3494 library with 2 ibm 3952 magstar (hcar2) tape, all connected by fc to the media server.

The "client" has it's data to an ibm ds4500 san by 2x 4gb fc each.

Raid volume on san are made by 12 fc 146gb hdd raid5.

[Omar_Villa]

Hi,

     For all those files is good to use Flashbackup, but 700GB is not much but if this are small files Flashbackup is your best solution, you can consider to use Multiple Streams also split the jobs between different policies, but I have to say that for small amount of files pure Netbackup is not enogh, is probably that you get a long time backups.

     PureDisk can be an other option I just want to mention it.

Hope this helps.

Regards.

[Anton_Panyushki]

I think it is a good idea to install a dedicated GbE interface card into this file server to improve backup herformance and use FlashBackup. It should give you about 100Gb/h  backup speed.