ADSM-L

Re: [ADSM-L] Looking for a solution for DFS backups - a.k.a. how do you do it

2018-01-18 14:43:41
Subject: Re: [ADSM-L] Looking for a solution for DFS backups - a.k.a. how do you do it
From: Zoltan Forray <zforray AT VCU DOT EDU>
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2018 14:41:51 -0500
Thanks for the feedback.  I understand the answers of "you are screwed
since IBM killed the part of the software you use - write your own" but
Management isn't going to allow a home-brew system.

I was hoping for suggestions to re-engineer the whole backup/restore
scenario/process.

Is anyone out there backing up DFS mounted storage/files?  How do you do
it?  What methodology do you use to backup and restore - in both corporate
and non-corporate environments?

FWIW, over the years we have been doing this, I could sort-of see this
disaster approaching as they kept adding more and more nodes/mounts/storage
to the CIFS/DFS mounts and expanding to 3-physical servers to handle the
load (which they don't since many of the backups run for close to 14-hours
due to the millions of files to scan and no way to do anything like
journaling) but nobody could come up with an alternative based on the
requirement of user-managed restores and the way we were doing it was
working - mostly......

So now that there is no choice but to force a different approach, we are
open to any and all suggestions...

On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 2:11 PM, Stefan Folkerts <stefan.folkerts AT gmail DOT 
com>
wrote:

> I agree with Steven, the only solutions I can think of are build it or buy
> it (if it's available, I never heard of anything like this).
> I would design and build a low-level solution myself and test that with a
> few users, if that works try and find somebody that can actually create a
> pretty GUI around it and build it up from there.
> As long as you are still using the BA client below it all and you only use
> it for restores there isn't that much risk in it I think, I would go with
> Powershell since you are doing the backup on Windows and it's capable stuff
> and build something (that is very flexible) from there to later have
> somebody code a webgui for.
>
> On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 11:49 PM, Harris, Steven <
> steven.harris AT btfinancialgroup DOT com> wrote:
>
> > I feel for you Zoltan
> >
> > My users are demanding, but at least the corporate management structure
> > means I have some measure of control over their demands.
> >
> > There is a TSM client REST API that came out at 7.1.3.  This can be used
> > to run backups and restores although the API guide explicitly states that
> > it is not supposed to be used for long-running tasks.  I don’t know if
> > later versions have lifted that restriction.
> >
> > Since you are a university, you might have some smart coders available. I
> > envisage a web-based service that at the back end runs this API to select
> > what to restore and then run it.  That could all reside on the one box,
> > with it effectively being a reverse proxy to your Windows backup servers.
> >
> > As you aren’t the only one in this particular bind, the result might be
> > commercially viable as a paid product.  If it gets that far I claim 5%
> OK?
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Steve
> >
> > Steven Harris
> > TSM Admin/Consultant
> > Canberra Australia
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On 
> > Behalf Of
> > Zoltan Forray
> > Sent: Friday, 12 January 2018 7:39 AM
> > To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
> > Subject: [ADSM-L] Looking for a solution for DFS backups - a.k.a. how do
> > you do it
> >
> > With the demise of the B/A web-client in 7.1.8+, we are in desperate need
> > of an alternative solution to handling our DFS/ISILON backups.
> >
> > Being a university, the big issue is that everyone wants control over
> > backups to be able to perform restores by themselves!
> >
> > Our current (soon to be unusable) solution is 3-dedicated physical
> Windows
> > servers with 25-configurations/services (each) of the B/A client (each
> with
> > unique ports for the web-client).  The backup schedules contain the
> > specific filesystem/mount it backs up.  So, department level folks can
> use
> > a web browser to connect to the correct port on the backup servers to
> > manage their restores.
> >
> > The volume of backups makes it almost impossible to shift everything to
> > one node (380TB / 225M objects) and if one server was able to handle it,
> it
> > would shift restore responsibility to some sort of "help desk"!
> >
> > So, how do you handle this kind of scenario in your
> > institution/organization?
> >
> > --
> > *Zoltan Forray*
> > Spectrum Protect (p.k.a. TSM) Software & Hardware Administrator Xymon
> > Monitor Administrator VMware Administrator Virginia Commonwealth
> University
> > UCC/Office of Technology Services www.ucc.vcu.edu zforray AT vcu DOT edu -
> > 804-828-4807 Don't be a phishing victim - VCU and other reputable
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>



-- 
*Zoltan Forray*
Spectrum Protect (p.k.a. TSM) Software & Hardware Administrator
Xymon Monitor Administrator
VMware Administrator
Virginia Commonwealth University
UCC/Office of Technology Services
www.ucc.vcu.edu
zforray AT vcu DOT edu - 804-828-4807
Don't be a phishing victim - VCU and other reputable organizations will
never use email to request that you reply with your password, social
security number or confidential personal information. For more details
visit http://phishing.vcu.edu/


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