The list has responded well to this topic, and I think most everything has
been touched on in later messages, but here is info I have put together.
Have you adjusted the variables in your staging policy? Specifically, you
could adjust the file system check interval, the max storage period, and the
low and high water marks away from the defaults in order to kick off the
staging more frequently. These are hidden attributes. This would more
effectively take advantage of a key feature within adv_file device that
allows you to stage and back up at the same time. This means that staging
can now begin immediately after your first save set completes.
Now, the default for the above mentioned variables are 3 hours for the
system check and 7 days for the max storage period.
Of particular interest in your case may be the Max Storage Period variable.
In the 6.x versions, this period was adjustable from 1-1000 days. In 7.0,
you can select hours instead of days.
Similarly, for the file system check and recover space interval, you can now
select down to minutes as opposed to only hours previously.
These adjustments were made specifically to enhance the disk to disk to tape
strategy.
Assuming you are using the default values, you are not taking full
advantage. If you were to reduce your file system check interval from the
default of 3 hours to say, 30 minutes, and your max storage period from 7
days to 7 hours (or even less), then your staging operation would be
triggered every 30 minutes. At this point, NetWorker will look at the Hi/Low
water marks on the filesystem and also the Max storage period and move the
save sets that meet that criteria. This should also help eliminate your
worry of running out of space over the weekend, though you may need to
adjust your recover space interval as well.
Your experience of everything being moved all at once leads me to believe
that you would benefit from adjusting these variables. The default of the
variables work well for one of the uses of staging, which is keeping files
available on disk for a couple of days (for easy restore) prior to moving
them off to tape. For your goal, you'll want to make some adjustments.
Now, reading your more recent post, I see that you really want to maximize
the time that your savesets can remain in staging for easy recovery, which
is of course one of the main goals.
Really, the biggest limitation you have in your environment is the
small(ish) disk. Your explanation of what will happen when it fills is
pretty good. Notification will be sent, old (retired) savesets will be
removed. Also, however, the opportunity is there to grow the disk/and disk.
In an "ideal" environment, adv_disk will use big disk/disk array/NAS
devices (see http://portal2.legato.com/products/networker/diskbackup.cfm )
for a link to a couple of whitepapers on these.
This is not to say it is not suited for what you are trying to do, but it
may require more configuration/effort when you have the limitations you have
brought up (small disk particularly). As other posts have noted, in some
environments, multiple, smaller disks may be more ideal, and this too is
supported.
I'll read your wish list for both posts again. On first read sounds like
these are good suggestions. If you are not engaged with a Legato rep and/or
don't know how to make *official* requests for enhancement and our
interested in doing so, drop me a mail and I'll get the right folks in touch
with you.
Cheers
Patrick Terry
LEGATO Systems, Inc
Senior Technical Marketing Engineer
LCNS, LEGATO Certified NetWorker® Specialist
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