Assistance on mixing backup methods - TSM v7.1.3

xyzegg

ADSM.ORG Member
Joined
Jun 27, 2011
Messages
48
Reaction score
0
Points
0
PREDATAR Control23

Hi,

Does it make sense for you to mix methods like Journal-based backup (3 or more times a day) plus incremental-by-date at the end of the day weekly and one Full Incremental (complete) at weekends?
  1. Win Server 2008 R2 (no memory-constrained, free CPU cycles)
  2. >30,000,000 Objects
  3. ~= 14 TiB of data
  4. Just one file system (one drive (LUN): no plans to change it)
  5. A backup window of 12 hours
  6. No work at weekends
  7. Predominantly MS Office files, PDF and Zip files
  8. Full incremental (complete) takes a long time to complete
  9. 5% daily change
  10. Dedup enabled (cliente side)
  11. No formal directory sctructure
  12. Some users rename/move/copy very large directory tree (+1M files)
  13. Some people do not trust Journal-based backup + Full Incremental here
 
PREDATAR Control23

The answer to this type of question is always the same: IT DEPENDS!

I'll answer with questions:
1 - do you have a business requirement for 4 backups a day (3 journal + 1 incr-by-date)?
2 - do you have a business requirement for the incremental by date at the end of each day?
3 - what are you trying to accomplish with the incremental by date daily?
4 - do you have a business requirement for a full incremental weekly?


If you are doing 3 journal based backups a day, the incremental-by-date doesn't really add any value, other than being a 4th backup and re-validating the journal DB, but it gets re-validated at the end of each journal based backup anyway, so no value added. If it doesn't get re-validated, the next backup will be a regular incremental backup to validate it.

If you use incremental-by-date, it's recommended to run periodic regular incrementals to deal with deleted and moved files.
 
PREDATAR Control23

The answer to this type of question is always the same: IT DEPENDS!

I'll answer with questions:
1 - do you have a business requirement for 4 backups a day (3 journal + 1 incr-by-date)?
2 - do you have a business requirement for the incremental by date at the end of each day?
3 - what are you trying to accomplish with the incremental by date daily?
4 - do you have a business requirement for a full incremental weekly?


If you are doing 3 journal based backups a day, the incremental-by-date doesn't really add any value, other than being a 4th backup and re-validating the journal DB, but it gets re-validated at the end of each journal based backup anyway, so no value added. If it doesn't get re-validated, the next backup will be a regular incremental backup to validate it.

If you use incremental-by-date, it's recommended to run periodic regular incrementals to deal with deleted and moved files.

Actually, there is only one requirement on this: it must be an incremental backup. People don't mind if It's a journal-based, full (complete) or incremental-by-date backup. Until last week, we did full (complete) incremental backups, but It's time to review it, cause It takes more time than our backup window (18:30pm - 18:30am) permits.

The problem is that people aren't comfortable with the risks involved with Journal-based backups.
 
PREDATAR Control23

The risks with current releases is a lot lower than with it's initial implementation at versions 5.x. Usually, if there is a problem with the journal, it will invalidate the DB and the next backup will be a forced incremental to re-validate the DB. So the risk is minimal.

Doing a daily journal-based backup makes sense given the size of the disk. I would only do more frequent than daily if dealing with time sensitive data.

The question that remains is how often do you need to make regular incrementals to give piece of mind to those not comfortable with it (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly).
 
Top