Veritas Netbackup SQL Extension

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Veritas Netbackup SQL Extension

douglasc

SSC Enthusiast

Points: 153
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August 16, 2004 at 7:59 am

#112184

Folks,

I'd be grateful for any insights into using the Netbackup SQL Server extension…..

We have approximately 150 SQL2k servers (mixture of 2-4 node clusters and stand-alones) holding databases that vary from 1 to 500 GB. Currently we use Netbackup to backup and archive native SQL .bak and .trn files. SQL backups are controlled via simple maintenance plans - logs backed up hourly, DBs daily. This approach is straightforward and has proved adequate for the last few years but recent problems with tape drive contention and disk space have led to calls for a rethink.

There is a proposal to use the Netbackup SQL Server Extension to backup our SQL servers. My understanding is that this will write the backups directly to cartridge, and should register them correctly in the SQL system tables as it will use the MS delivered backup API.

We're currently using Netbackup Datacentre (Version 4.5) on W2K servers. For the new environment being planned we may move to Netbackup Enterprise (Version 5).

Right now I’m wading through the Netbackup documentation so any comments, pros/cons, etc. will be gratefully received.

TIA,
d.

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Gold-158597 SSC Enthusiast Points: 185 More actions · Answer 1

We are using Netback Veritas. It works pretty good. We never has any issue. We are using QualStar with SAIT1 FDA tape drive which backsup 1GB data in a minutes. For stroage we have HP EVA5000. Which I can direct back to tape. SAIT1 native size 500 GB and compress 1.3TB.

Thanks

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736210 More actions · Answer 2

I'm always wary or writing directly to tape. It seems a much less stable mechanism for restores. I personally haven't used this product, but I have used Backup Exec and Arcserver in the past, both of which supposedly use the same APIs. I have had issues restoring from tape, more issues than successful restores.

Litespeed and other products also use this API, but by writing to disk, you have 2 chances to restore instead of 1. Once from disk, once from the tape it's written to.

douglasc SSC Enthusiast Points: 153 More actions · Answer 3

Thanks for the responses guys.

I share your reservations re. backing up straight to tape....

cheers,d.