For your first general question, as always, it depends.
For economy of tape usage, the way you are doing is best.
If you don't have to do much restoring, this is o.k. Seems like
you say you do have long restores.
First step would be to analyse the restores. Is it mainly a few nodes
that are getting most of the restores? Is it a particular type of
node, Oracle DB, Netware File Server, etc. If this can be narrowed
down then determine what to do with these nodes data.
Examples you could do:
1. Put Oracle DB's, and Netware servers, each type in separate tape pool.
2. If they have a LOT of data, then even consider collocation by node
for the large nodes. (I have LTO1 tapes also. I have collocation by node
for two nodes that each do a full DB backup of propietary DB of about
100GB each every day, and some incrementals during the day. That
way, I can do a restore of either one or both onsite without tape contention
between them or other nodes). I have collocation by node for the offsite
tape pool for these nodes also. They are our most critical systems.
If there are really BIG you could consider collocation by filespace
for those nodes.
Your second question, I haven't needed to do that, so don't have
an opinion. I understand the basic reasoning behind that strategy,
just haven't had experience to say what's best, except you would
also want to analyse nodes data to see which ones and why you would
want to do this. This would most likely consume extra disk space too.
David B. Longo
System Administrator
Health First, Inc.
3300 Fiske Blvd.
Rockledge, FL 32955-4305
PH 321.434.5536
Pager 321.634.8230
Fax: 321.434.5509
david.longo AT health-first DOT org
>>> Jack.Coats AT BANKSTERLING DOT COM 02/24/04 09:14PM >>>
Just curious. ... We have all disk storage pools using a single tape pool as
the 'next pool'.
If the pools have significantly different sizes of data, does it make sense
to have multiple
'next pool's of tapes. One for very large files (like TDP for Mail files)
and another for 'smaller'
files? We have fairly large tapes (LTO-1's) so it seems like we are doing
recovery forever.
second idea:
I was even toying with the idea of having multiple disk pools, with size
restrictions on the
first pool, so big files go to the second. both would still backup to the
same tape pool.
Suggestions for a best practice?
.... TIA ... Jack
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