Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] When is a media server required?

2004-08-16 13:55:33
Subject: [Veritas-bu] When is a media server required?
From: ewilts AT ewilts DOT org (Ed Wilts)
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 12:55:33 -0500
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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