ADSM-L

Re: TDP, Exchange 2003, and SANs

2004-06-24 11:02:59
Subject: Re: TDP, Exchange 2003, and SANs
From: Del Hoobler <hoobler AT US.IBM DOT COM>
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 11:02:42 -0400
Todd,

I have embedded some answers below.

Thanks,

Del

----------------------------------------------------

"ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU> wrote on 06/24/2004
10:39:59 AM:

> I am working up my plan to backup our new Exchange 2003 storage groups.
> Our environment includes:
> Exchange 2003 running on Windows 2003
> TSM 5.2.2.5 running on AIX 5.2
> Shark storage for the AIX server's disk based storage
> EVA (I think) storage for the Exchange server data
> LTO1 in a 3584 accessed across a McData 4500 SAN switch
>
> I read through the TDP for Exchange v5.2 documentation.  It appears that
I
> cannot split up the different data types (meta, data, logs) into
different
> management classes, but I can put the different backup types (full,
copy,
> incr, diff, dbcopy) into different management classes.

This is intentional because you want all "TSM objects" that
represent a single, logical backup to be managed under the
same policy but you may also want to be able to manage the
different backup types with different policy.


>
> My questions are...
> When doing an incr, or diff backup via TDP, how does TDP do that?  I
> intend to backup the storage groups "full" across the SAN.  The storage
> groups will be 20GB in size.  From what the Exchange admins are telling
> me, Exchange creates log files with a max size of 5MB.  During an incr
or
> diff backup, does TDP backup all the log file transaction information as
> one filename to TSM, allowing for less overhead when using a SAN, or
does
> TDP keep individual log file names intact, backing up each one serially
> (which would lead me to believe that using the SAN would actually slow
> things down)?

Data Protection for Exchange performs incremental and
differential backups by backing up the full
transaction log files to TSM. They are all placed into a
single TSM backup object.
During restore, Data Protection for Exchange will
pull the individual log files out of the single
TSM object and write them to disk.


>
> All my experience with TDP is in SQL (and a bit in Domino).  Does TDP
for
> Exchange get out of sync as easily as TDP for SQL when dealing with
> management class name changes?  With TDP for SQL, I have to rename the
> existing filespaces and start with new filespaces whenever I change
> management class names to ensure the meta stays in sync with the data.
Are
> there any quirks like this in TDP for Exchange?

SQL has some unique issues that cause the anomaly that
you are referring to. The root cause of it on SQL is the
multiple-striping that is allowed and the temporary objects
that are used to hold pre-transaction-commit striped data.
Even if you didn't use multiple-striping, it can occur.

Data Protection for Exchange does NOT have this issue.


>
> Are there any other things I should be considering?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Todd

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