At this site we have 3 ADSM servers, one of which is implemented to back up
about 30 servers (MS Exchange, file servers, print servers, AIX and NT) and
250 desktop workstations. The desktops are about half and half Win95 and
WinNT, couple of odd Solaris, HP, OS/2 machines here and there. We expect
the 250 desktops to grow to 400 within another 6 months.
What the department found was that with 400 desktops, they were losing a
couple of hard disks a week. This resulted in a tremendous loss of
productivity, because the humans who lost the desktops would then spend a
couple of (very expensive) days just trying to get their machines customized
again.
The department is full of power users who make heavy use of MS Exchange (or
Outlook) and the MS office suite. The way Microsoft has distributed Windows
products makes them largely un-maintainable from a systems programmer's
point of view - user files are squirreled away everywhere, and mixed in with
operating system files.
We found this makes it necessary to back up the entire operating system, not
just the "My documents" directory. Why? Because you can't predict where
the user customization will end up. Netscape bookmarks end up in a
subdirectory in "Program Files". Users' customized toolbars, including
stuff from MS office add ins and local MS office applications, end up in
Templates way down somewhere in the MS Office subdirectory. Worst of all,
MS Outlook customization ends up in the Windows registry.
So, you can't put back user's files and also get their desktop customization
back. So we back up everyone's entire machine so we can do a complete
bare-metal restore if necessary, right down to the last icon.
That turns out not to be as bad as it sounds. Our library (an STK 9710) was
sized from the outset to cope with it. Assuming 400 users with 2GB hard
disks; the 2GB hard disks are not 100% full and easily compress down to 1GB
or less each. 400 GB of data moved to 35GB cartridges, means that all those
extra copies of Windows etc. takes up less than 15 cartridges in a library
with 362 slots. So, it's really no big deal. And it's more than worth those
20 cartridges to management to save a couple of man-days of productivity
every week!
We do exclude the obvious junk, like Windws/TEMP, Netscape and IE Temporary
Internet files, etc, that no one ever needs back.
ADSM has been extremely well-received by our users, who greatly appreciate
getting all their customization back when they need it.
We tell users to restore their own files, if they want to restore copies of
files or directories; but if they lose a whole disk, someone from the Help
Desk walks them through the bare-metal restore, or does it for them when the
new hard disk is installed. Users are unlikely to do a bare-metal restore
of WinNT correctly on their own, since even many power users don't really
understand the registry.
Regarding policies, we keep user backups for 6 versions or 60 days, which
ever comes first. (That is, versions are limited to 6, and RETAINEXTRA is
set to 60, RETAINONLY is set to 60.)
We picked these particular settings because we have had these policies for
user data on the mainframe for years, and people understand it. And, we
find we only get about 1 request a quarter, at most, for data we can't
restore, which seems reasonable.
(BTW, in the past when I analyzed our retention data, I found that
increasing the setting of "RETAINEXTRA" really had more impact on our
library capacity than increasing the "VERSIONS" parameter. Play around with
some numbers and see what you get, but I think you will use server storage
more efficiently if you set RETAINEXTRA to something reasonable, like 60
days. You still always have the most recent backup of active files.)
Anyway, backing up desktops is no problem at all, if you size your equipment
to handle it.
Hope this helps.
***************************************************************
Wanda Prather
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
443-778-8769
wanda_prather AT jhuapl DOT edu
"Intelligence has much less practical application than you'd think" -
Scott Adams/Dilbert
***************************************************************
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joel Cooper [SMTP:jocooper AT dttus DOT com]
> Sent: Monday, November 23, 1998 1:05 AM
> To: ADSM-L AT vm.marist DOT edu
> Subject: Your experience....
>
> My firm is just starting to try out ADSM. I am being given the duty
> of
> working out workstation backups... something we've not offered
> before.
>
> Are you backing up workstations? What retention policies are you
> offering your users?
>
> Thanks,
> Joel Cooper
|
