Exchange Backup on TSM??

[bc_2000]

Hi all,

I'm quite new to TSM and have had to pick it up on a 'hands on' basis, but I'd really like some advice on our setup...!



We had a consultancy come in and review our requirements, based on this they setup and installed TSM 5.1.5.4 with a IBM 3538 LTO library. (3 x drives, 39 slots - 100GB/200GB Tapes)



They have then setup TSM to backup our Exchange 5.5 server on a nightly basis, every night of the week with a 30-day retention (as our security policy requires.) and Our 2 Novell Servers which are small file servers.



The problem is the Exchange information store is 137GB. TSM backs up changed files, and the ISDIR is changed everyday!!

This has given us a problem due to Tivoli's 'intelligence' with space reclaimation and expiry..



Our library is forever working!!.... If its not backing up the Information Store, its moving it. If its not moving it, its reclaiming space...and eating tapes like Smarties!!

We cannot stop any active processes as it finishes the file its working on...and thats 137GB.

The library is constantly full due to the 39 slots, 30 day retention - 1 day per tape!



I can't help but think this 'consultancy' have not sold us the ideal solution for our requirement.

TSM works fine on typical 'Files'. It backs up quickly, efficently stores the files, holds 3 active copies....fine! but the ISDIR worked sooooo much better on a rotation based backup on Arcserve.



Does anyone else have the same setup, or any advice???



Thanks, I hope the above makes sense!



BC_2K

 

[Murkin]

Hey,



With a 140G Exchange backed up daily and saved for 30 days, how can you not expect your 39 slot library to be full ?



From what I managed to understand from your mail:



A) Start using a TDP and not backing up exchange as a files



B) (Once A is done) You should have Exchange backup directly to a _tape_ storage

pool. Thus you will have no 'data moving'.



C) If space is a large issue you might want to look into incremental exchange backups (via TDP). (I personaly had problems with this, maybe someone can put some input on that..)





Good luck

 

[bc_2000]

Thanks for the advice.



We are already using TDP for the exchange backup, (sorry, I should have mentioned that earlier!!) and when I contacted the supplier regarding our problems they configured the backup to write directly to tapes, as you mention in B)..... although this failed repeatedly.

I was told it 'sometimes works' but most of the time doesn't...



It was then configured back.



Im not sure what C) is? (I hate being a newbie).

The ISDIR is an incremental backup, but the 137GB file changes everyday, and is therfore backed up everyday.

I understand the 'exchange logs' type of backup (which will only backup each days log changes before they are written to the ISDIR) but because TSM doesn't use rotation sets when would I restore my full ISDIR from?

Would I then need to restore everydays logs since that full backup...?



I hope this makes sense!.. and thanks for getting back to me!

 

[Murkin]

Using the TDP to write directly to tapes should work with no problem at all. Only reason this might fail if you have a very bad network connection betwen the mail server and the tsm server. Try checking into this..



How do you run your exchange backups ? It sounds like you have the TDP but not using it correctly:



In the Exchange TDP directory you have two files:

excfull.smp

excincr.smp



You should edit those files and copy them to .bat

Then set your schedule to run the batch you want on the mail server.



(You should ofcorse set Exchange to not use log rotation if you want incremental backups)



Good luck

 

[tsmadm]

From you retention requirements (30 days at 137GB) this works out to ~4.1TB. Your library has 3.9 TB of capacity. I never factor compression when sizing an environemt. I believe at least on a sizing issue, you were given the wrong solution.



I am assuming that the data travels over a 100 mb network. If this is the case, it will take ~14 hours to back up the Exchange server. I have 2 suggestions:



1) Replace the LTO 1 drives with LTO 2 this will double the capacity of the library.

2) IF the infrastructure exists, use a Gigabit connection from the Exchange server to the TSM server.



Once you fix the bottleneck (network) and add capacity TSM will work as promised.

 

[AndyRH]

One of our Exchange server's DB is about 80 gig and it runs in 3.5 hours. This is a full backup with server side compression turned on using 100/full Ethernet.



Have you tried collocating the Exchange data or using different pools for Exchange data vs. other stuff? Since Exchange will expire at a fixed rate and in a FIFO order this should help your space reclamation problems if you set you reclamation threshold high. File server stuff will expire randomly.



I do agree that you are in deep yogurt because the library is small.



This is the guts of the batch file I use to backup Exchange.



set exc_dir="C:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM\TDPExchange"

cd /d %exc_dir%

tdpexcc.exe backup * full



There is another job that backs up the file system.



Andy





11/07/2003 20:00:45 Request : Backup

11/07/2003 20:00:45 SG List : *

11/07/2003 20:00:45 Backup Type : FULL

11/07/2003 20:00:45 Database Name :

11/07/2003 20:00:45 Buffers : 3

11/07/2003 20:00:45 Buffersize : 1024

11/07/2003 20:00:45 Exchange Server : (Local Machine)

11/07/2003 20:00:45 TSM Node Name :

11/07/2003 20:00:45 TSM Options File : C:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM\TDPExchange\dsm.opt

11/07/2003 20:00:45 Mount Wait : Yes

11/07/2003 20:00:45 Quiet : No

11/07/2003 20:00:45 -------------------------------------------------------------------------

11/07/2003 23:36:13 Total storage groups requested for backup: 3

11/07/2003 23:36:13 Total storage groups backed up: 3

11/07/2003 23:36:13 Total storage groups expired: 0

11/07/2003 23:36:13 Total storage groups excluded: 0

11/07/2003 23:36:13 Throughput rate: 6,057.23 Kb/Sec

11/07/2003 23:36:13 Total bytes transferred: 80,073,150,796

11/07/2003 23:36:13 Elapsed processing time: 12,909.60 Secs

 

[scotteiktsm]

Just a quick idea that may help with your library utilization. We have about 120 gig of Exchange database ourselves, but I decided to never reclaim the copypool tapes. We just send one out per day and one comes back. Sure we waste 80 gig for each offsite Exchange backup, but if I was to try to reclaim more than one tape per day, I would have my library working overtime trying to move data around to get extra tapes back. If you don't already, create a separate tapepool and copypool for just the exchange backups. This way your local mailtapepool fills tapes as it needs them and expires them in the same order, and your offsite storage needs no reclamation.

 

[bc_2000]

Hey All...

Thanks for all the advice and options you have given!! It helped so much!



I've checked the Exchange TDP files as Murkin listed...we use the excfull.bat.

We are using a 100mb Network, but we do have 1GB available... I'll have to upgrade the NIC is each server.



LTO 2 Drives I hadn't thought about....I'll find out a cost.



Scotteiktsm's idea seems the available favorite, if I can set this up we will save huge amounts of time that tsm uses incopying pools and space reclaimation.



I've also looked at changing our backup strategy to use TSM for all our Novell, NT and Windows 2000 servers - which it copes well with, and a seperate rotation based backup for Exchange.



THANKS!