Replication, directory and container pools

DavrosDalek

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PREDATAR Control23

Hi Guys

Need some advice please, i'm going round in circles with this.

We have two Spectrum Protect servers (8.1.6.000) in 2 sites, one is located in our primary site where all of the backup clients are located (ba & sql tdp mainly) and the other is located in a dr site, both are connected together using a 10GB network.

I have 2 storage pools on both servers, FILEPOOL1 for ba client data and TDPPOOL1 for tdp client data.
On the primary site
FILEPOOL1 is 69TB and is 42.2% Utilized
TDPPOOL1 is 344.9TB and is 16.5% Utilized.

My storage pools have the following device class, FILEPOOL1 = FILEDEVC, TDPPOOL1 = TDPDEVC, i also store TOC in the same storage pool as the backups.

We have 2 requirements
1) Must be able to repair the backup data (storage pool) in the primary site from the dr site, similar idea to having a copy pool
2) In the event of a disaster i need to be able to restore the backups that were originally taken by the primary server from the server in the dr site. I do not need to be able to backup from the dr site, i believe that it is possible unless you know better and this would only be required in a dr situation if it was possible at all.

So i have been looking at replication, i can set this up via the command centre but i am only replicating the backup data and not protecting my storage pools, this,i have found out, is because we have directory pools, i understand that we need container pools to do this. I posted on this thread and it was most helpful Replication - how should it be done?

I have looked into an in place conversion of my directory to container pools, but to be honest it looks like that could end in tears, document mentions lost data etc etc, i don't want to risk that as i have no copy pool to recover from, hence why i'm looking at this in the first place.

I could remove some of my current directory volumes to create some free space and then create a new container pool, if i did that is it possible to migrate the backups of a particular backup node to the new container pool or is it possible to migrate an entire policy domain, i have several, all per customer SLA, retention time based. Or should i stop all of my backups one at a time and start again, pointing them at the new container pool ?

Any advice gratefully accepted :)

Craig
 
PREDATAR Control23

You are currently using a "file" storage pool. Directory is a type of container pool, the other is cloud.

So, in the case of a file pool, you need to do a backup storage pool in order to be able to restore it in the event of a DR. And you'd need to replicate to be able to restore at the DR site.

Seeing you want to use a 2 site solution, you'd be better off to convert your 2 file pools into 1 large directory container pool. Why just one storage pool, better dedup reduction because dedup doesn't work across pools. Also simpler to manage. You can still use 2 pools if you want.

Once you go with directory container pool, you can protect the pool to the target server, and replicate the metadata so you can restore from it. If your primary site has an issue, you can repair from the target or do client restores from the target.


I could remove some of my current directory volumes to create some free space and then create a new container pool, if i did that is it possible to migrate the backups of a particular backup node to the new container pool or is it possible to migrate an entire policy domain, i have several, all per customer SLA, retention time based. Or should i stop all of my backups one at a time and start again, pointing them at the new container pool ?
The conversion is at the pool level. How you'd go about it, is create the new container pool, update your copygroups to point to it, so all new backup go in the container pool. Then daily when the server is the least busy, run the convert for X number of hours, repeat until done. If you do a client restore, it will read the data from wherever it's stored at that moment, old or new pool.
 
PREDATAR Control23

I've got a semi-related question: can we use cloud container pools to replicate or would they have to be directory container pools? If the latter is true, is there any way to convert a cloud pool to a dir container pool? I'm thinking probably not.
 
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