1. How much of your work week is spent on backups.
In lieu of any problems, I spend less than 30 minutes a day on backup
issues. I come in, check Networker, check the backup emails and go on about
my business. I also usually log in at night before I go to bed to resolve
any issues.
2. How many people are involved.
1 and 1/4. I manage the backups for the entire enterprise. The 1/4 is the
operator who swaps the tapes every morning, a 5 minute job.
3. If you are spending a lot of time, what's your justification? How do
you justify it?
I have been the whole route on backups and every time I get new hardware,
specifically tape/jukebox hardware, the time I spent drops drastically.
When I was backing up to 8MM, I literally babysat that thing constantly. I
moved to DLT and my time dropped drastically until my hardware started aging
as my enterprise grew dramatically. I just got two brand spanking new Sun
L25 jukeboxes with LTO 2 drives and I barely have to look at them.
I backup about 400 GB a day from 20 - 25 servers. I have had lots of
problems in the past due to poor technology, poor programming, poor
configurations, lack of planning and lots of other things. However, I'm
afraid I have to agree with your other folks, backups should just work. If
you have to spend a lot of time on them, someone needs to figure out why. I
mean really, how can you do a decent disaster recovery plan if you are
constantly futzing with the backups? If you have bad hardware, that should
be pretty easy to prove and you can then justify spending some money. There
are a lot of things that can't be solved by throwing money at them but, in
my experience, backups is not one of them. I went from DLT7000 to LTO2. I
went from a max of 5 MB/sec to 12 MB per sec. I have seen the L25s cloning
at over 30 MB/sec. Backups that used to eat up 10 tapes and want more now
can't fill up 2 tapes.
Of course, everything is relative. Maybe there are things you have to deal
with that simply can't be fixed (like Users). Maybe a little more
information about what you spend so much time on would be helpful.
Jim Edwards
Systems Manager
Texas Secretary of State
-----Original Message-----
From: George Sinclair [mailto:George.Sinclair AT NOAA DOT GOV]
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 2:01 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTMAIL.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: [Networker] How much time do you spend on backups?
Just curious how much time some of you spend on your backups. Clearly,
when new equipment is being installed or major software updates, you're
gonna be spending a lot of time, but let's just say on average:
1. How much of your work week is spent on backups.
2. How many people are involved.
3. If you are spending a lot of time, what's your justification? How do
you justify it?
Backups at my shop involve just myself and one tape operator. That's it,
just the two of us. Personally, I find that this whole backup thing is
pretty much a full time job unto itself. There is always plenty of work
to be done, and I can only automate so much, but some folks seem to
think otherwise. They say that with proper automation, a backup
specialist's job can be reduced by 80%, and if not, well then things
just must not be configured or set up right. I tend to doubt that. Can
anyone help me to justify that backups are not some simple thing that
you just quietly usher away at night, only to have some magical reports
and scripts just do everything for you? Would like to hear it.
Thanks.
George
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