Checkout a product by EMC  called timefinder.
I think GE Medical is testing it out.
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From: Ben Kokenge
To: ADSM-L
Subject: DB storage/performance question ADSM or Legato?
Date: Friday, October 30, 1998 11:42AM

We are looking at a situations here and I would like some advice.
We have 2 Oracle servers of 200GB/each and 2 SyBase servers
of about 200GB/each all running on HP's.  We need to run full
backups nightly (full due to restore performance issues) of each
server.  There are also some 500 desktops to backup incrementally
Now here are the issues.  If we design an ADSM library system
for this setup, we would need something that could back up like
almost a Terra-byte a night (12 hours/night).  This is where ADSM
breaks down.  Is it possible to move that much data through a
network to single ADSM library per night?  If we have one big library,
say an R50 RS/6000 with 3494 library with 4 x 3590 drives, it might
be able to handle the data volumes, but can you get all the data there
in 12 hours?  If we run 2 100mbps fast ethernet line to the R50
we could, in theory, move 650GB in 12 hours. Calculated:

(100Mbits/s) x (2 lines) x (60% efficiency of ethernet) / (8Mbits/MB) =
15MB/sec

which translates to 650MB/12hours.  Sure I could add another ethernet
card, but I don't think the ADSM server can update it's own database
and backup data faster than 15MB/sec.  I used shared memory and
can only backup off SSA at 4MB/sec under ideal conditions.  Multi-thread
that and triple it, but the ADSM database files are running 100% busy.

So, this is where Legato comes in.  Legato works well at backing-up
to tape drives attached to local machines.  I could use Legato to
backup the Oracle and SyBase servers, then use ADSM for all the
desktops (incremental backup is ADSM's forte').  I have pondered the
idea of having each database server run its own ADSM server and backup
to local tape drives; that would probably work, but that is somewhat
pricey.  I REALLY don't want to use Legato.

Get to the point Ben.  OK.  What I would like to know, and I know there
has to be others out there with these kind of problems, is how does one
goes about backing up several large database servers?  Someone will
probably throw out the "connect agent" and "backtrack" words, but again
we have restore performance issues, so only full database backups are
allowed.

I humbly await responses.  (well maybe not the "you idiot" ones...)

 -Ben