Ok,

All you are writing at your email are doable.

Puredisk as a client deduplication has many limitations. Using puredisk at media level is ok.

For the remote offices there are three choices, regarding your data and your money.

A)     You can use one  netbackup 7 media server with deduplication.

B)      You can use a netbackup 7 media server and a  puredisk server (PDDO).

C)       You can use backup exec 2010 deduplication and replicate to netbackup 7. (this is something I haven’t test, just hear of it )

Netbackup license is per TB. Puredisk has a 256 MB license. Backup exec has a list price of ~$2700 per backup exec server (yes!!). Choose the cheaper that works for you.

But:

You are going to use it with VCS.  For me this is mandatory, as if you lose one puredisk server you will lose all puredisk environment. Unfortunately the  implementation of VCS with purdisk is not the optimal. This is something I found the hard way. Also, talking before some days with a Symantec representative, he was very surprised that I have a clustered puredisk installation. And I was surprised that he was surprised. To my mind, clustered puredisk installations are mandatory, as I said.

 

If you continue with cluster puredisk, be aware that patch 6.6.0.2 which is solving many bugs, is not tested with clusters. In fact brakes the cluster’s node relationship.

I do not know if they fix it now, but install it right after the initial installation and be prepared to call support.

 

Apart this problem, puredisk does what it has to do and with huge success.  I recommend it for your environment, but only for what you described at your email.

And do not let the Symantec tech to leave, before you get good restore speed……

 

If anybody wants to know what limitations puredisk client side dedup has:

A)     There is a limit of 50 million files per data selection. (that is “no of files of the system” x “retention”. For a server with 3 ,5 milion files you can have 14  retention) This kind of servers are always static and good for client dedup. But there is this limit. You can break the data selection, but who wants to take the risk  to do it manually.

B)       Does not support clusters…. I do not know if there is  any company that has his exchange in a standalone system…  And there is an exchange agent..

C)      It does not restore fast enough without tweaking. But this is not in the manuals. Even Symantec support does not know about. We had to open there eyes.

D)     If you are a netbackup admin, the puredisk 6.6 GUI is very ugly. And it is better than puredisk 6.5.

E)      You cannot export to tape from a replicated puredisk. This is something I cannot understand.

 

As netbackup deduplication is based on puredisk 6.6 binaries, almost all limitations of puredisk exists at netbackup 7. But you can bypass them easily.  

 

Again, as I said, puredisk for your environment is a good choice.

 

Sorry for my English. I hope that you can understand the mining of what I want to write.

stefanos

 

 

We would use the Puredisk product similar to how we would use a DD device, it would backend the Master/media servers as a backup location.  We need the environment to be able to cut some tape from the backups that were written to the disk backup location.  We will also need the disk backup location to be able to replicate to another similar device at another location; the important part of that replication is that the NetBackup master needs to know about both of the copies.

 

At this point we won’t be using the NetBackup 7 dedup as it is limited, it only does 37TB I believe??  Whereas the Puredisk or DD devices can manage much more than that.  Down the road, I’m thinking that I can use the NetBackup 7 media server dedup to write dedup backups at our two small sites and replicated to the puredisk cluster in our HO.  I know I won’t be able to do this with the DD device without buying two more small ones…so this is why I’m wondering out Puredisk….

 

Thanks!

 

Ph:  250.414.7650  Cell:  250.213.9295

 

Clarify how you will use puredisk and if you will use the standalone puredisk product or netbackup 7 deduplication option.

 Then we can talk….

stefanos

 

 

I’m wondering if anyone out there is writing backups though NetBackup 6.5.x Media server to Puredisk?  If so, what is your feedback?  I’m wanting to compare puredisk to a data domain device.

 

Thanks!

 

Scott Chapman

Senior Technical Specialist

Storage and Database Administration

ICBC - Victoria

Ph:  250.414.7650  Cell:  250.213.9295