On Mon, Aug 16, 2004 at 10:23:44AM -0700, Mike Day wrote:
> When is a media server required?
There are 2 common cases that I can think of off the top of my head:
1. When the master server can't communicate to the clients because of
firewalls in the way.
2. When you exceed the I/O capabilities of the existing media server
> I have one fileserver that has grown to be more than ? a TB of data and it
> takes about 28 hours to complete its full backup.
A large part of the performance issues is how many files the volume has.
Few large files are much more efficient than lots and lots of little
files.
> 1. What benefit will the media server have? I'll need to sell this to
> management to substantiate the additional cost. Darn we are already paying
> more than $50,000 for the annual maintenance costs for the client, server,
> drive, db, vaulting licenses!
If your performance is currently acceptable, don't spend any money. If
what you have is doing the job, then you obviously don't *need* another
server.
> 2. Should I put the media server installation on the file server
> cluster that has grown to more than 500 gigs or should I dedicate a new
> server to fill this function?
That's known as a SAN media server client.
> 3. Can the media server be a Windows server or should it be AIX like
> the master?
It can be either but Windows media servers are a pain to work with. If
you add a tape drive to your library, expect to reboot a Windows media
server (it took us 3 reboots before all was done). On our Solaris media
servers, no reboots were required.
If you have a choice, go with a Unix media server - AIX in your case
because you're already familiar with it.
--
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org
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