Networker

[Networker] VTL Discussion - Diligent, NetApp & COPAN

2007-09-17 12:10:05
Subject: [Networker] VTL Discussion - Diligent, NetApp & COPAN
From: "Gilles, Paul" <paul.gilles AT NAVTEQ DOT COM>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 11:04:46 -0500
My apologies for the previous lack of information. Our Networker server
is a Sun V480 running Solaris 9 with 2GB of memory, and 1 GB Ethernet
port which averages 650 megabits/sec during prime backup time (11 pm - 4
am). We are migrating to a Sun T2000 with an 8 core processor, 32 Gb
memory with two trunked GB Ethernet ports (with the ability to scale up
to four ports). 

We currently have 285 clients, of which 165 are Windows clients, 90
Solaris, 25 AIX and 20 Linux. We also have 30 Dedicated Storage Nodes:
24 Solaris, 4 Windows, & 2 Linux. These servers are all on our Hitachi
USP-backed SAN with 200 TB between these servers. We have a core-edge
design with two Cisco 9509s, soon going to four. The remainder of the
servers are backed up over the Gigabit Ethernet.

We back up an average of 12 TB per 24 hours, with a monthly peak of 25
TB. Each server has a full backup once a month, with incremental backups
the remainder of the time. These full backups are spread throughout the
first 28 days of each month. We have an ADIC Scalar i2000 with 20 tape
drives: 9 LTO-2 & 11 LTO-3 (of which two are direct-connected NDMP). Our
data is a mix of Oracle database export or dump files on SATA disk, flat
files, proprietary data and the usual Windows-type application files.
LTO-2 tape drives average 20-25 MB/s, while LTO-3 drives average 35-40
MB/s. Our data growth per year has been averaging 25% per year for the
past three years. I do not expect that to change much in the next five
years.

Our main problem is that we are unable to run our backups in even an
eight-hour window. This is important because backup now impacts our
production servers during prime use. Some of the side benefits of a VTL
we expect: the ability to keep 30 days worth of data in order to do
restores without resorting to off-sited tape, the possibility of doing
some replication of the more important backup data for DR purposes. We
realize that without data de-dedup at first we would likely have at most
2 weeks worth of data. This is acceptable for approximately six months.

We eliminated Data Domain because we were not confident that would be
capable of scaling up to where we will likely be in three years.


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