Networker

Re: [Networker] Multiple Media Pools Bad?

2009-09-02 09:03:23
Subject: Re: [Networker] Multiple Media Pools Bad?
From: "Greggs, Dana" <c-dgreggs AT STATE.PA DOT US>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 08:58:51 -0400
In my environment we use two Pools, one for File System Backups and one for 
Database backups. We have 6 Networker Servers and two Storage Nodes backing up 
several thousand clients (VM's and Physical). The only caveat having a lot of 
Pools is not having an available drive to mount the tape when needed, unless of 
course you have more than two drives or your backups don't run concurrently.

Thanks,

Dana

-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On 
Behalf Of Chester Martin
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2009 1:45 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: Multiple Media Pools Bad?

I didn't know if having a lot of pools will cause issues with networker.  I 
guess you could say we're a pretty big shop as far as data and servers to 
backup.  I have somewhere in the 200-250 of servers to backup, and over 100 
vm's, with more being added daily.  We have about 4 storage nodes and 10 or so 
dedicated storage nodes.



-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On 
Behalf Of Werth, Dave
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2009 12:06 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] Multiple Media Pools Bad?

Chester,

I don't necessarily think multiple media pools are bad depending on your 
situation.  But too many pools can cause unneeded complications for you.  For 
instance we are pretty small in regards to NetWorker.  I backup a total of 16 
Windows servers, 1 Solaris (UNIX) server and 1 MS Exchange server and we have 2 
tape drives.  I only have 2 pools, one called "Backup" and one called "Backup 
Special".  I use the Backup pool for all of my regular backups and I use the 
Backup Special pool for our "Month End" archival backup and the occasional 
manual backup of specific things.  Then I also have corresponding clone pools 
for each of the backup pools.  It keeps things pretty simple for us.

With a bigger NetWorker setup that has multiple storage nodes and/or multiple 
locations it would make sense to have more pools.  I'm not sure though it makes 
much sense to have multiple pools for separate OS or NetWorker Module backups 
unless they are big enough by themselves to fill a tape or more.  I tried that 
when we first got NetWorker and it was just an unnecessary complication for us.

Dave Werth
Garmin AT, Inc.
Salem, Oregon
-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On 
Behalf Of Chester Martin
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2009 7:14 AM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: [Networker] Multiple Media Pools Bad?

Hello,
I'm not trying to "hijack" this thread so I'm posting it under another
subject.

Why do you think it's bad practice to have multiple pools?  Other than
the pain of unchecking the drives if you have to delete and recreate
devices (and it is a pain.. :), it seems to have worked well in our
setup.  We have multiple sites, and I don't want my backup traffic going
across the wan, so having multiple pools seems to have worked well.  

I have separate pools for each of the following at each site:
- windows os
- linux os
- sql
- exchange
- ndmp
- vcb

I would think that having multiple pools would speed up cloning as it
wouldn't have to wait for source tapes, currently I clone by group and
we have to make multiple clone copies of all of our data.  Having
multiple pools has worked pretty well for us.  

Is there some sort of impending doom that having a lot of pools will
cause in the environment, if so I need to change my setup.. :)


-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of Davina Treiber
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 2:21 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] Make Expired Volumes Browseable

Tim Mooney wrote:

> Here's one thing I've never really understood: why separate your index
> savesets from your data?  I don't get what the advantage is, so we've
> never done that here.  Our indexes save to the same pool/tapes as the
> actual saveset data and their browse/recover period is the same as the
> saveset data.
> 
> Can anyone enlighten me on this issue?  I know there are plenty of
sites
> that are saving indexes separately so there obviously has to be a
valid
> reason for it.

The usual reason is to speed up a DR situation, so that when you do an
nsrck -L7 for all clients it does not need to read dozens of tapes.

There are other situations where it may be beneficial. Some sites have
lots and lots of pools (bad practice IMHO). In this scenario if you were
backing up some data to a storage node in one pool, NetWorker would need
to unmount the tape from the storage node and remount it on the server.
The worst case of this is where you have non-shared libraries, and
perhaps just a small library for just the server. In this case you could
need to have lots of tapes labelled in various pools on the server just
to write indices.

There are valid arguments NOT to have a separate pool for indices too.

There are also arguments both ways for backing up the indices all
together in one group rather than with the data groups.

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