We've got HDS here and we were snapping an AMS 500 and mounting it
elsewhere for backup.  Are you taking a performance I/O hit while
backing up?  My 2 cents are - if the backup is slow on whatever storage
you have presented - its going to be just as slow (or slower) on the 2nd
set.  For Exchange we ended up beefing up the LUN's - giving the extra
spindles to the application (which it can also use when not backing up!)
That solution worked for two multi-TB Oracle DBs and our primary
Exchange cluster.  If that's not going to work for you (and I fully
understand that some Databases take everything you got and still want
more) then this solution works fine.  You script your Database into hot
backup mode, have your Hitachi utility server snap the volume, then
mount it up and back it up.  I haven't done this for SQL - but I assume
you are using VSS to quiecse the data?  We also considered keeping a
copy of the database (replicate it via SQL or depending on version of
Exchange you might need a 3rd party tool) then failing that cluster
resource over to the 2nd node and backing it up using that.  Since there
isn't much read-write traffic on this copy you can use slower storage
but still get decent backup times.

Good luck - and if you wouldn't mind I'd love to hear about your
experience / what solution you come up with.

-Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of
briandiven AT northwesternmutual DOT com
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 4:28 PM
To: VERITAS-BU AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] HDS Shadow Image & NBU for SQL/Exchange Backups

 
I am investigating alternative options for a large SQL DB and Exchange
backups.  I am entertaining the thought of Hitachi's Shadow Image
software along with NBU's Advanced Client to use VSS to make me a clean
shadow copy of this data.  Then I would take the Shadow Image and mount
it to a Windows Media Server and backup to FC tape drives.  This
effectively gives me an off-host backup with no impact to the
application.  I'm running NBU 6.0 MP5.

Has anyone had experience or words of wisdom regarding this type of a
solution?

TIA - Brian

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