Haven’t used BackupExec but for most
backup solutions nightly FULLs is overkill. Typically what you want to do is a
FULL once a week for things that don’t change frequently (e.g. operating
system components, applications binaries) then do incrementals or
cummulativeincrementals the rest of the week to get the few things that might
change. Also in this scenario you wouldn’t need to do the FULL on every
system on the same night – you could stagger the FULL throughout the
week.
I imagine BackupExec allows for
incrementals but not sure if it allows for cummulativeincrementals. The
difference is the former only gets what changed since the last backup (be it a
full or a prior incremental) whereas the latter gets everything that changed
since the last full.
I’d suggest something like this for
10 machines:
Machines 1 & 2 Full on Sunday
Night/Monday Day and Incrementals all other nights
Machines 3 & 4 Full on Monday
Night/Tuesday Day and Incrementals all other nights
Machines 5 & 6 Full on Tuesday
Night/Wednesday Day and Incrementals all other nights
Machines 7 & 8 Full on Wednesday
Night/Thursday Day and Incrementals all other nights
Machines 9 & 10 Full on Thursday
Night/Friday Day and Incrementals all other nights
The reason for above is if something
happens to your tape drive you don’t miss all your fulls on the same
night while waiting for it to be repaired.
By doing above you only do incrementals
(or cumulativeincrementals) on the weekend so will use less tapes.
Also you do not need to use the same tape
for every backup – in one of our smaller backup environments we have the
operator change out the tape on Friday to insure it is blank at the start of
the weekend as there is no one to monitor it. You can put the other tape back
in after this one fills if you want in the following week.
From:
veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Bockert, Patrick
Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008
2:22 PM
To:
veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Backup
Strategy
Greetings,
I'm
looking for assistance in creating a new backup strategy for a number of
servers that are currently being backed up nightly with a full backup. Until
now the backups were running fine, but the problem is that the backup's are now
requiring a second tape to complete and over the weekend there is no one
available to swap tapes.
Our
current retention of the daily tape is 30 days and the monthly are kept for a
year. My first inclination is to schedule a weekly full with differentials for
the remainder of the week. Instead of 14 tapes per week, I could maybe get by
with 3. The full backup would still require 2 tapes but if the differentials
could be appended to the same tape I could maybe leave the tape in for the rest
of the week. Then start the rotation with another set of 3 tapes with four sets
in all.
Specifically
I'm utilizing Veritas BackupExec to backup HP Proliant servers to super DLT
Tape.
I'm
looking for a simple solution that may result in less time and tapes to
implement.
Does
anyone have a suggestion?
Regards,
Patrick
Bockert
