Networker

Re: [Networker] Thoughts on Cloning

2003-11-25 10:58:55
Subject: Re: [Networker] Thoughts on Cloning
From: "Fields, David" <David.Fields AT ACS-INC DOT COM>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTMAIL.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 10:58:22 -0500
I used to have the same problem, and to fix it I've written a fairly basic
script that tries to separate out ssid's for parallel cloning to help remove
"tape dependencies"...for example, if the clone of ssid 000000001 on tape
0001 requires a saveset on tape 0002, then both tape 1 and tape 2 are in the
same "batch".  It tries to avoid the situation where it's cloning save set 1
and it needs tape 2 to complete (say if the save set was continued on
another tape), but tape 2 is busy having other save set's that are stored on
it cloned.

I've managed to reduce my cloning time considerably using this method.  What
used to take almost 2 days I can now finish in 12-16 hours.  I'm cloning
just our full backups that we run on Friday, not the other incrementals.  If
you just get a list of the savesets and run those through nsrclone, it
doesn't make the best use of the tape drives if you have multiple tape
drives.  After using the script, it makes much better use of the tape
drives, and cut's the time by about half.

It's still not perfect, cause sometimes you get aborted save sets in there,
and cloning Notes and Exchange is kinda tricky since they tend to create
lots of savesets.  Still, it's better than nothing.  My next step is to get
rid of aborted savesets and clean up some other stuff, and add some better
reporting on what's been cloned and when it finishes.

Dave Fields



-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Maiello [mailto:robert.maiello AT MEDEC DOT COM]
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 11:23 AM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTMAIL.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] Thoughts on Cloning

Yes, one single pool or group cloned normally will take quite a while.  Your
rate (though one tape at time) is still quite good.

A parallel cloning script would definitely speed this up.

Short of that what I've done is seperate our envinronment/backups into
several groups and pools.  While one group runs the other can be cloning.
In this way I've gotten some parallelism.   You'll need a different backup
tape pool for each group if you want to do this reliably.

Also, in the interim, I found that adding  the mminfo sorting order -omo
helped my simple ssid clone script speed up a bit.  Thanks to Ed Skolnik
for this idea (under the thread "Faster Cloning").

Robert Maiello
Thomson Healthcare


On Wed, 12 Nov 2003 11:21:06 -0500, Ciolek, Ken <Ken.Ciolek AT AIG DOT COM> 
wrote:

>I was looking for feedback on how you do cloning. We have a rather large
>environment and takes us 4 days to complet cloning. We clone about 18TB. We
>only have one pool and clone all the FULL save sets via a home grown
script.
>
>Ken Ciolek
>SAN Storage Administrator
>Open Systems Support - Storage
>AIG Technologies
>(973)533-2094
>(973)277-1148 (Cell)
>(888)463-9721 (Pager)
>Ken.Ciolek AT aig DOT com
>
>
>--
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