On 24 jun 2010, at 02:25, Steve Harris wrote:

> Hi gang
> 
> One of my customers is implementing a consolidated fileserver. 
> 
> This will run in a two way MSCS Cluster.  At the moment they are looking at
> one big filesystem though I will strenuously attempt to dissuade them from
> that course.
> 
> Each machine in the cluster is a VM based on a different VMware physical
> server, running windows 2008 r2 64 bit. TSM client will run on the VMs.
> 

If they're going to use VMWare, why use a windows cluster. Can't they achieve 
the same with VMWare?

> My proposed strategy is:
> 
> - Daily incremental.  With journalling. Standard cluster setup with one
> scheduler for each machine and one for the cluster resource.  Journal
> database resides on the cluster disk. 

Makes sense. But, I'm now assuming that the individual machines disks are 
fairly static, so why bother with the TSM incremental backups, and not live by 
weekly VCB backups alone for those? If you run in a cluster, there are some 
tweaks to the journal service to just trust the journal DB, rather than purge 
it in case of a fail-over.

> - Weekly VCB image of the cluster disk(s) to enable fast restore after disk
> failure. 

can do.

> - Monthly incremental. Since journalling can't be used on more than one
> node-name, the monthly incremental will take days and is run by a separate
> scheduler in the cluster as follows:-
> -- VSS snapshot of the cluster disk is mounted 
> -- backup is taken 
> -- snapshot is deleted. 
> -- NB VSS snaphots are machine-specific so a failover kills this 
> 

why? Use journaling for the cluster disks, with a dedicated hostname for the 
cluster. It might be a good idea to run a normal incremental once in a while, 
esp. if you don't do a normal incremental after a cluster failover.

> Questions
> - Most changing documents are word/excel/powerpoint. Is subfile backup a
> good fit here on the daily client? What about overhead? 

subfile incremetals are very useful for clients with 28k8 modem connections. I 
wouldn't bother in a normal data center environment with plenty of bandwidth.

> - How does one handle the possibility of failover when taking the VCB
> image? The volume may be mounted on the other VM 
> - can anybody help with scripts for the monthly VSS snapshot backup? 
> 
> Other than the one large filesystem issue is there any obvious flaw in my
> strategy?
> 

Yes, TSM client 6.2 is not supported with the 5.5 server ;-)

> TSM Server is 5.5,  I will install the 6.2.1 client but this server won't
> be upgraded for a while.
> 
> Thanks for your input
> 
> Steve.
> 
> Steven Harris
> TSM Admin
> Paraparaumu NZ
> 

-- 

Met vriendelijke groeten/Kind regards,

Remco Post