Adam,
This is a good thread and I am going to add my comments, but am interested
to hear what others have to say.
First, we have the same issue with large, slow, Windows clients. Typically
we employ the break it up into separate datastreams/policies approach for
these. This works, but is a real headache to get the right configuration to
fit into the window.
I've also tried flashbackup, which works better if you have the bandwidth,
but ended up taking about the same amount of time as several Windows
policies. The problem in this situation was the large amount of free space
that gets backed up. I opted to go back to the several policies approach,
for now.
I am very interested in checking out the SAN client, but it currently has
limitations of disk only targets and certain HBAs. The situation I am in
does not really allow us to turn the clients into SAN Media Servers, but I
have done this in the past and I did not like it. As you probably know,
drive issues or NBU maintenance may require rebooting your Media Server,
which is a bad thing when it's a production application server. So you then
get into the no backups or take a downtime lose-lose choice.
Defragging can help, and there are several of the defrag vendors out there
that have data to support this. I don't believe that the included Windows
'diskeeper lite' version will help much, but I don't have any personal
experience to support this, only what I've heard from the list and others.
If your data is pretty static, synthetic backups may be an option (but I
don't know if I would do it!). I'm also interested in what PureDisk can do
for these clients.
I plan on testing this in a lab in the next few weeks and I'll share my
findings when I get to that point.
-Rusty
________________________________
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of "Mellor,
Adam A." <Adam.Mellor AT woodside.com DOT au>
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 7:36 AM
To: <VERITAS-BU AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu>
Cc: Ed Wilts <ewilts AT ewilts DOT org>
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Speaking of NTFS:
My backup systems are Solaris, I have the "luxury" of vxfs filesystems
for my staging & database areas.
I do however back up Windows file servers, Are there any guidelines to
NTFS volumes that people would recommend ?
I thinking along the lines:
Defragmenting,
Number of streams,
LUN Virtulization tech,
Volume Sizes,
Maintaining free space,
Snapshot methods,
impact of ohh sooo many small files
Performance improvements with Advanced client / Flashbackup,
SAN Media server,
(For the adventurous) SAN client ?
For example, i currently have pain with about a dozen windows clients,
from what i can tell
we do not do defragmentaion
their LUNS live on HP EVA's sharing spindles with hosts
Free Space is minimum (~7%)
Volumes are only ~500GB
We backup with Multiple streams (Exceeds weekend (and daily)
backup window if we don't (Windows are large)
Currently backing up the windows dataservers is a pain point for me, I
am interested in hearing peoples learnings / Golden rules when it comes
to backing up large (over 500GB) NTFS Volumes.
Adam Mellor
Senior Unix Support Analyst
CF IT TECHNOLOGY SERVICES
Woodside Energy Ltd.
________________________________
From: Ed Wilts [mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org]
Sent: Thursday, 14 February 2008 1:17 PM
To: Mellor, Adam A.
Cc: VERITAS-BU AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Defrag DSU?
On Feb 13, 2008 6:22 PM, Mellor, Adam A.
wrote:
Although I am not currently defragmenting my current DSU
volumes, I
previously had ~4TB in a single DSU under NBU 5.1 . This volume
was
running vxfs
vxfs says it all, you lucky guy. NTFS just sucks... try a 4TB DSSU on
Windows and see how much fun you have.
I do like your idea of dropping the threshold to a low value to empty it
out more frequently though.
.../Ed
--
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org
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