Storage and Backups

Was wondering how everyone handles their storage backups. Assuming you have to sites (Production and DR) that sync data in almost real time. Is there a point to still off loading the data in DR to tape?

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arwes

We're still using Backup Exec 10d with nightly tape backups. My boss hooked up a Maxtor external drive to backup our Exchange server to. Only things we're backing up are a file server, our SQL server and our Exchange server. I imagine we'll still be doing it this way for a long time, seeing as how nothing in our budget requests ever get approved.

We're using NeverFail for replication (not a big fan of their software, but I wasn't involved in the evaluation - in fact I'm not sure there was an evaluation, my boss found out a rival company was using it and jumped on it). We've got the backup servers in house, but we're moving them to a colo site soon possibly.

gateway

NightShade03 wrote: »

Was wondering how everyone handles their storage backups. Assuming you have to sites (Production and DR) that sync data in almost real time. Is there a point to still off loading the data in DR to tape?

We have about 60 servers, most of these are backed up by 8-tape autoloaders. Backupexec ranging from old Veritas to Symantec 12.5.

Is there a point to offloading the data in DR to tape? I guess that depends on your companies policies or contractual requirements. I hear a lot of people say there is no point; DR is expensive in the first place without the overhead of backing that up too. However in my opinion DR should be an exact replica of live. Should the DR environment suddenly become live (eek) then yes, backup solutions will need to be in place. It's good practice to have it in place and used/tested. But hey - that's in an ideal world. Everyone's budgets and circumstances are different.

NightShade03

The bigger problem for us is that we are backing up our database file (about 10 TB) and to push that to tape encrypted takes about 20 hrs....which is insane. I can't seem to find another solution that would allow us to take some like tapes offsite but provide faster "write-to" times.

tiersten

We sync to the DR site overnight and also do an offsite tape backup. Each week gets a full tape backup and then incrementals. The monthly full backup is stored for 7 years.

Staff keep paper records and audits so even if we did lose 1 week of data, it is possible to recover. They won't be happy as it will mean a large number of late nights though.

As you might have guessed, I work for a financial institution and so you can't avoid the offsite backups even if you wanted to.

NightShade03

tiersten wrote: »

We sync to the DR site overnight and also do an offsite tape backup. Each week gets a full tape backup and then incrementals. The monthly full backup is stored for 7 years.

Staff keep paper records and audits so even if we did lose 1 week of data, it is possible to recover. They won't be happy as it will mean a large number of late nights though.

As you might have guessed, I work for a financial institution and so you can't avoid the offsite backups even if you wanted to.

Haha well I don't work for a financial company however we operate under the same guidelines (without the keeping tapes for 7 years thing).

astorrs

DR isn't the same as backup. Just like backup isn't archive.

NightShade03 wrote: »

The bigger problem for us is that we are backing up our database file (about 10 TB) and to push that to tape encrypted takes about 20 hrs....which is insane. I can't seem to find another solution that would allow us to take some like tapes offsite but provide faster "write-to" times.

If tape is needed (for off-site long term storage, e.g. Iron Mountain) then it sounds like your library isn't fast enough. Even a small 2 drive library should be able to push it from disk in <50% of that time and larger libraries in a couple hours.

sidsanders

NightShade03 wrote: »

The bigger problem for us is that we are backing up our database file (about 10 TB) and to push that to tape encrypted takes about 20 hrs....which is insane. I can't seem to find another solution that would allow us to take some like tapes offsite but provide faster "write-to" times.

you look into inline encryption devices? should put the encryption load to hardware other than the media server or tape drives/library while keeping the speed at a decent rate. is your db on a san that has any cloning or snapshot features? those can help make the backup process easier as well.

NightShade03

The db is on EMC which supports deduplication...not sure as to why we don't use that.....

sidsanders

dedupe or snapshot/clone support? is this a clariion or dmx? oracle db?

we have some items to make snapshots of oracle db's on a cx line and assign them to a diff machine to do dev/test work or if we wanted to backup (with rman as well).

NightShade03

Clariion (C series) and it's an AS2 db....don't ask y