Mutli stream backups for Exchange

[Bobo-Da-Hobo]

Hello All,
We have an exchange cluster of 2 servers, running exchange 6.5.7
They are being backup using TSM 5.5 server using the TDP version 5.5.1.
These are scheduled to perform full backups every Saturday & two hourly incremental backups Monday - Friday.

The problem is that on exchange server one, with 4 databases, the weekly full backup is taking approx. 55 hours to process. (first 3 databases take 25 hours, last database takes up to 30 hours).

I have suggested changing the schedule to run 2 separate backups in parallel.
I thought this would be as simple as updating the existing command file to backup databases 1-3 and a second command to backup database 4
I could then create a second schedule for the same node to use the new command file.

My colleague thinks that we will need to define a new node to backup the db separately, & that we will also need to define an additional cluster resource on the exchange server.

I would appreciate it if any of you could advise on this in case I have missed some glaringly obvious complication from performing it the way I suggested?

Thanks in advance for your time.

 

[moon-buddy]

I don't use the TSM scheduler for this but Windows scheduler. I fire up multiple Exchange backups for the different mailstores which uses the same node name but different OPT file

 

[moon-buddy]

Or, you can run this in parallel using TSM scheduler with one twist: the schedule will call a DOS batch or cmd file that fires up multiple backup commands that points to the different mailstores.

 

[Bobo-Da-Hobo]

Hi Moon-Buddy,
I may have notexplained my aim very well. I hope this clears up my thought process...
I plan on using 1 node, with two schedules calling two different batch files, similar to the following:
Sched Name Action Objects start dayofweek period
EXCHANGE01a_WEEKLY Command c:\excfulla.bat 00:15 Sat 1 day
EXCHANGE01b_WEEKLY Command c:\excfulla.bat 00:45 Sat 1 day

excfulla.bat
tdpexcc backup db01, db02, db03 full /excserver=EXCHANGE01 /tsmoptfile=%exc_dir%\dsm.opt /logfile=%exc_dir%\excscha.log >> %exc_dir%\exchfulla.log

excfullb.bat
tdpexcc backup db04 full /excserver=EXCHANGE01 /tsmoptfile=%exc_dir%\dsm.opt /logfile=%exc_dir%\excschb.log >> %exc_dir%\exchfullb.log

Can you see any issues, such as contention from a scheduling perspective?

Thank you

 

[moon-buddy]

As I mentioned on my second post, an option is use one TSM schedule calling these two batch files from one batch file.

No conflict or contention should arise.

 

[Bobo-Da-Hobo]

Hi,
Just an minor update to close the thread.
Created a batch file to call two other batch files.
The key thing for me was to use the start keyword
i.e.
start exc-a.bat
start exc-b.bat

in each exc-*.bat I entered the tdpexcc command line i needed to backup the specific databases & I had to put an 'exit' to close the active cmd window afterwards.

Thanks again for your support moon-buddy