I have no experience in this area, so others in this forum will probably
correct me (hey, isn't that what a forum is for, though?!), but I can't
possibly imagine backing up all those hosts to one library. I think
you'd bring what ever server is managing that library to it's knees,
begging for water. I would strongly consider getting several libraries
and implementing storage nodes to distribute the load, along with
appropriate scheduling so not everyone is vying for attention at once.
I've seen PC's showing up with larger and larger drives, rivaling or
exceeding many of the drives on our Unix boxes, so don't think for a
minute that the PCs could not invoke misery on you if you don't channel
them right.
I would probably want 6-8 fast drives like SDTL or LTO in say three or
four libraries each minimum but you might need more like eight libraries
if they were smaller ones. I would use high speed multi-channel SCSI
cards so not all the drives on a given library are running on the same
channel on the affected card. This will widen your throughput by
allowing say two or three drives to operate on one channel while the
picker and other drives operate on the other. I would probably consider
putting maybe two libraries on each storage node. I would cram their
respective servers and the main server with as much memory as possible
and put all the servers on their own subnet to eliminate non-backup
traffic. I would upgrade the main server to the latest release. I would
add plenty of disk space to the main server to handle all those 3000 new
indexes. I would try to run all the servers on Gigabit with a really
fast switch. This is kind of like an ethernet version of a SAN. Perhaps
this seems like overkill, but it's just my two cents.
You might have to consider, though, having more than one primary server.
One server might just get too bogged down, even with the storage nodes.
Perhaps one server could handle the laptops and another the desk tops?
By the way, are all these 3000 clients local to your domain?
I, too, am very curious to see what others, who have more experience in
this arena, particularly Microsoft environments, have to say about this.
George
Steve Lee wrote:
>
> Hi. I have been using Networker to backup 20 Solaris clients for a few
> years. We have one library, do a little manual cloning, a very vanilla
> setup. I have been asked to plan for backing up 3,000 windows clients next
> year. These are desktops and laptops running 98, 2000, XP.
>
> Do I just order a JUMBO library, 3,000 client licenses and hope for the
> best? Is anyone working in a similar environment willing to share
> experiences? I'm comfortable with Networker and Solaris but if I need to go
> to a different platform or a different software so be it.
>
> I welcome all suggestions.
>
> Regards,
> Steve
>
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