Synthesize backup of Network shares

[yanotakashi]

I am trying to backup network shares. In the normal policy, it works fine as expected:

Full backup (once a week)->It takes 1 or 2 hours. The size is 100G bytes and the performance is 10-20M bytes per second.

Cumulative backup (daily)->It takes 1 or 2 minutes.

I tried the policy with synthesize backup. It did not work as expected:

Synthesize full backup (Once a week)->It takes 1 or 2 hours.

Cumulative backup (daily)->It takes 1 or 2 hours.

The network share's size will be over 10T bytes in the future and the normal full backup will take much days. This is the reason why I tried synthesize backup. I expected that synthesize full backup less time and cumulative backup takes the same as normal backup but the situation is worse:

Synthesize full backup takes the same hours of the normal full backup and synthesize cumulative backup takes the same hours of the full backup.

When I tries the synthesize backup on the local disks, it worked as expected. If the backup target is network shares, it does not work as expected. Is there any solution to make synthesize backup work as expected ?

I am using NetBackup 7.1.0.4 Enterprise.

[Mick_Scott]

what type of policy are you testing with ?

the network share CIFS or NFS ?

what storage is the network share on ?

is NDMP supported ?

Do you use MSDP if so have a look at https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/optimized-synthetic-backups-taking-art-and-science-syn...

[yanotakashi]

The policy type is: MS-Windows

The network share is: CIFS

The network share is: ISILON's

ISILON supports NDMP with NDMP option hardware but there is no ISILON NDMP option.

I have not Deduplication option so I cannot use the information at the link.

[revarooo]

Synthetic incremental backups will take the same time. its when you do your synthetic FULL backup that you will see it run quicker than a regular full backup!

Remember, you have to run a regular full backup first, then the cumulatives then you do the Synthetic Full (which will be quicker than your normal FULL)

[Omar_Villa]

Remember that Synthetic backups move all the processing to the Media Server even if it takes the same time as a full when the synthetic processing is ongoing everything is at media server level and the client doesnt take any hit or at least is way smaller.

[teiva-boy]

Keep in mind you can do NDMP in Isilon over ethernet.  Just making sure you have NBU properly licensed for that.  

Or you can by the NDMP accelerator from Isilon that lets you go direct to tape over FC.  This does cost extra from isilon for a special node.

But NDMP over ethernet I do not believe costs extra from isilon.

Though ultimately synthetics over CIFS/NFS are far superior as they are not proprietary like NDMP is.

[watsons]

Is this CIFS network share on your client, or on your backup server?

I found this link that talks about synthetic backup .vs. NDMP. There is something he talks about where to mount the share that could impact the performance:

http://www.backupcentral.com/mr-backup-blog-mainmenu-47/13-mr-backup-blog/48-forget-ndmp-a-use-synth...

[Mick_Scott]

Have you run the test many times ? can you show data and file  volumes not just time.

Have you enabled login at the client, have a look in bpnkar and bpcd logs

Have you tried referencing the CIFS share as a UNC path ?

[Mick_Scott]

bpbkar log    not   bpnkar

sorry finger trouble

[yanotakashi]

The backup of network shares are working fine with or without synthetic. Only the problem is that the synthetic cumulative backup is very very slow. Synthetic cumulative backup seems to read all the files. The backup size and the number of backup files of the full and synthetic cumulative is almost equal.

[yanotakashi]

I checked the license we have but we have no NDMP options...