Hi,

On Tue, 27 Sep 2011, René Moser wrote:

> Okay, it is not _really_ during day it is more like backups over night
> to disk and backup to tape should be finished in the morning. But this
> is just a detail. We did not have (yet) really (big) problems about
> consistency. But as you say these systems are live systems and if a we
> hit a bad timing, that is always a problem.

I'm not sure how your timings work out, but spooling might give you a
shorter overall backup window -- so the tapes would free up quicker, which
might allow you to run the entire process outside of work hours.  It's
difficult to tell from here though.

> This may be a limitation of the current backup software in use. It may
> be faster this way (we are using a tape changer). 
> 
> We also have had troubles with some tape drives and this way (backup
> first to disk) was an advantage so the backup was already on disk and we
> just had to fix the tape changer and backup the disk volume to tape.

Not having extensively used tapes and spooling, I can't say if this will be
workable here.  You'd need to test.

> I am really open do to it the "bacula way" if there is a better
> workflow. 

I guess you'll need to do some testing and see what works best for you.  It
sounds somewhat promising anyway.

> > 3. Do you use Incremental backups at present or full backups each day?
> 
> Actually mostly differentials.

Might incrementals be quicker in terms of limiting load on the live server?

Another feature you might consider is the ability to run Virtual Full
backups to consolidate an old full backup and subsequent incremental or
differential backups into a new full backup.  We do this using disk-based
backups, but I'm not sure it will be so practical on tapes.  You need to
have two devices too, one to read from and one to write to which you may
not have.  

Gavin



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