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Question on backing up EVault with NetBackup.

abaack
Level 3

Running NetBackup 7.5.0.7 and EVault 10

From all of the whitepapers, manuals, etc I've read our policies are outdated and based on early versions of NetBackup.  We also typically do disk-disk-tape.

 

Can you give me any insight on if I'm on the right path or anything that needs corrected?  I read the basic configuration whitepaper and followed that as a template.  I have four policies:

1. EV_OpenPartitions (Fingerprint and Open Partition) - Full is run from Fri night until Sun night.  Differential is run Tue - Fri from 2AM - 6AM.  The full in the begining might finish Sat morning, but once the partition gets fuller it creeps into Sunday so hence the bigger window.

2. EV_DIR (DirDB and MonitoringDB) - Full is run Mon morning and differentials are run Tue to Fri after the Open Partition differential backup window is closed.

3. EV_Index (IndexLocation)- Full is run Mon morning after EV_DIR window is closed and differentials run Tue to Fri after the backup window is closed.

4. EV_Closed (Closed Partition) - The EV guy manually runs it every 3 months or so.

 

My questions:

1. Most of our backups are typically backed up full and diff to disk and then do a synthetic to tape.  Since I believe EV cannot do a synthetic I'm not sure how to get the backups to tape... do I just run yet another full to tape?  At that point my backup windows are twice as long.

2. Am I correct in that policies 1-3 cannot be ran at the same time?

3. Right now the DIR and Index policies don't get run until Monday morning even though the Open Partition starts at Friday.  I read that it's important to keep the backups as close to each other as possible.  Is this an issue?

4. Am I hitting all the directives needed?  We had a separate policy that only backed up the Fingerprints but then it was also backed up in the Open Partition policy.  It seemed duplicated.

5. Is there a better way to backup?  I've read somewhere about a batch script that kicks of jobs at certain times, but sounds sort of complicated.

 

Thanks for any help!

7 REPLIES 7

Will_Restore
Level 6

I would say read these technotes several times, and follow them to the letter, at least it took me many times to get it right. 

 

Best Practices for Enterprise Vault

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH172279

 

Recommended basic backup configurations when protecting Enterprise Vault

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH150237

 

abaack
Level 3

Thanks for the reply.  I have read those already extensively.  Set everything up according to the 'basic backup config' and also going off of #2 backup choice for the best practice.

 

None of those documents touch on how to get the information offloaded to tape though and some of my other questions.

Will_Restore
Level 6

OK, I will try to respond to the additional questions as best I can.

 

1) no Synthetic backups with Enterprise Vault. 

 we backup to Basic Disk and Duplicate to tape via Staging schedule

 with Advanced Disk you could use SLP duplication instead

 

2) we stagger our shedules though there might be some overlap it is not intentional

 

3) our EV full backups (all four policies) finish within a day.  If it's taking all weekend for yours you might want to open a support case for performance hints.

 

4) see the technotes for what to back up and when

 

5) same as #4 

 

 

abaack
Level 3

Sorry for the delay, but I was wondering the size of your EV site?

 

For example, our last full backup was 380GB (6.1 Million files) and it took 17 hours.

I believe our EV guy is cutting the partition around 800GB so you could see if it got close to being full we would be around 34+ hours for a full backup.

 

Is that not typical performance?

Will_Restore
Level 6

270Gb backup completes in about 12 hours here, Friday night through Saturday morning.

 

Make sure you have Collections enabled so the millions of DVS files are compressed into hundreds of CAB files. 

abaack
Level 3

OK, so it looks like our GB/Hour is around the same.  What partition size do you cut off at?  Like I said, I think our guy does around 800GB to match a full tape.

abaack
Level 3

Guess my questions are too hard?  :D