I have to disagree with the ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES being a good thing in some 
circumstances. I recently went from using ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES to specifying each 
of my disk slices (/, /usr, /var, /opt, etc.) and breaking them out with 
NEW_STREAM on my UNIX servers for a very simple reason. Using ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES 
and multiple streams will thrash the disks on that type of machine.

Think of it like this.... You have several disk slices or partitions, but they 
all share a single "disk". When you do ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES + Multiple Streams then 
you are in fact initiating a stream per partition/slice. This can be upwards of 
4-5 streams hitting a single disk which means the head is jumping around all 
over the place to provide the data flow and wearing your disk out.

I've been to a few of the NetBackup classes, and in every one I've been told to 
never let the number of streams exceed the number of spindles in the physical 
hardware you're backing up. With specifying my directories individually I can 
regulate the streams so that I am not overtaxing my disk hardware. If I have 
say / + /usr + /var on one disk mirror, then I can specify those directories 
then the NEW_STREAM and then my /opt directory which is a ZFS pool on another 
set of disks. This way I am not running the risk of thrashing the disks and 
reducing their service life prematurely.

Your mileage my vary of course; there are arguments for both sets of thinking. 
I just found what the instructors were saying to be a very compelling argument 
to avoid ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES for my UNIX servers and keep using it mainly for my 
Windows servers where each drive is generally a physical drive.

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu 
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Dean
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 3:01 AM
To: Nathan Kippen; Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] "/" + Cross All Mnt Pts Vs. ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES

We use ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES and "allow multiple streams" everywhere,
regardless of the O/S.

Where there is a database that needs to be backed up seperately, it
will have it's own policy just for that database, on that client, and
the backup selection list might look like :

/opt/oracle
/oradata/db1
/oradata/db2
/oradata/db3

Then, we back up the rest of the client in a more generic "catch all"
policy ... say a policy named "unix_system_prod", which contains many
clients and has ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES in it's selection list.

We setup an exclude list for that particular client, for only the
"unix_system_prod" policy, which contains the entries listed above, so
that we're not backing up the db files twice.

ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES is a good thing! It means never having to say "Umm...
sorry... we don't have a backup. The Unix guy didn't tell us when he
added that /super_critical mountpoint 3 years ago."


On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 8:24 AM, Nathan Kippen <nate.kippen AT gmail DOT com> 
wrote:
> I'm just looking to see what the recommendation out there is for backing up
> unix-based servers.
>
> In the past I've always backed up a unix client using "/" in my selection
> list and using cross all mount points + exclude lists.  As I was browsing
> through the Admin guide I read that ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES could be used on
> unix-based clients as well.
>
> I'm interested to know how people out there backup their unix clients.   We
> use cross all mount points so to make sure that an Admin doesn't create
> something on a client that needs to be backed up that he doesn't tell us
> [backup admins] about.
>
> I'm looking into using the ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES directive with "allow multiple
> streams" so I can stream out my unix clients by filesystem thus getting more
> i/o throughput by having the backups read from multiple physical disks at
> the same time.  ... This opposed to using "/" + NEW_STREAM .. since I don't
> really know what directories are actual filesystems.  (I don't admin the
> majority of the clients I backup.)
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
>
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