April 15, 2008 at 7:14 am
Hello all. I'm in an environment where I am the new DBA and am implementing FULL RECOVERY model for the sites critical databases. There are around 6 servers that house production data as well as test data. It is somewhat of a mess but I am on a quest to clean it up. To make things easier on the networks admin., I was thinking of "specking" out a server where all backups would go to. In that way, his tape backup would only need to point to the target drives on the server. Offcourse, I would have to schedule my backups intelligently where maximum throughput can be done. I am not much of a hardware guy but granting that RAID 5 will be used, has anyone implemented this kind of solution? The databases are not very huge. 20 gig is the largest.
I'm thinking at least 4 processors with 4 logical data drives that will be RAIDED. I do not have a handle on how many NICS can be used. I would really appreciate the input.
Thanks.
April 15, 2008 at 7:40 am
Hi
If you are considering a dedicated server to be a file server for your backups, also take the following into consideration:
* is this server going to be in the server room with redundant power etc
* do you currently have a server that you could use - maybe add extra drives?
* would an external drive surfice?
* are you also going to backup your hourly / daily transaction logs to this server / drive?
* what speed are the disks? 10k / 15k
* is there a large budget say for expensive / fast disks
* is there budget for a small NAS or SAN equivalent?
* how many days of backups are you going to keep
* is the network 100MB or 1GB or higher
* are all the servers local - same site
* what is your backup window
Many of the above questions need to be discussed as the cost versus potential data loss is always a fine line.
We are fortunate to have a dedicated SAN that stores all our backups.
The speed of the 15k SAN disks are much faster than any normal HDD, but at 20GB - if you have the time then you may not need to spend the extra costs at time point in time.
Let us know how it goes
Thanks
Kevin
April 15, 2008 at 7:55 am
Thanks for the response. I used to work at a place with a SAN in place. My current shop is small enough where that technology is not feasible. Yes, I will be targeting the drives on this server to receive all the .BAKS and .TRNs . We realize that the tape back-up window can be an issue so I know we have to upgrade the tape back-up system as well.
Thanks for the input. I guess that I can do some more research.
April 16, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Kevin (4/15/2008)
HiIf you are considering a dedicated server to be a file server for your backups, also take the following into consideration:
* is this server going to be in the server room with redundant power etc
* do you currently have a server that you could use - maybe add extra drives?
* would an external drive surfice?
* are you also going to backup your hourly / daily transaction logs to this server / drive?
* what speed are the disks? 10k / 15k
* is there a large budget say for expensive / fast disks
* is there budget for a small NAS or SAN equivalent?
* how many days of backups are you going to keep
* is the network 100MB or 1GB or higher
* are all the servers local - same site
* what is your backup window
Kevin
To piggy back on what kevin said. We have a dedicated backup server for all(most) of our sql databases. Another thing to remember is that backing up to disk over the network introduces additional issues.
1. backing up over the network is going to take longer.
2. higher possibility of network hiccup causing backup to fail.
What I do is to backup locally and then move the file to the remote backup server. While I am technically i am using double the disk space, I know my backup will never fail due to a network error. My most recent backup is always available and anything older, I can get from tape.
I still centralize the backup files, making it easier to backup to tape and ultimate easier to retrieve and restore.
Another issue to also note is the impact to the SAN/NAS device when all the backups are occuring. I'm assuming since you're doing daily backups, you'll want all the backups to finish prior to the tape backup actually starting to capture that day's worth of backups. This will minimize your ability to spread the sql backups over a period of time to to prevent disk contention.
Good luck.
August 24, 2011 at 1:08 am
Hey, we are going to use easeus todo backup advanced server to manage our server and database.
I searched a lot about its performance and finally decided to buy one have a try.
Wish me luck!
I recommend it.:-D
August 24, 2011 at 2:09 am
Hi
Sound good, but keep in mind that if the backups are stored in a format other than the usual SQL .BAK format - you need to be sure that if you need to restore the database to another server or environment - you will need the same software before you can restore this backup format.
In the case of a server failure - you will also need to factor in the time to install this software before starting the DB restore. Also you need to ensure that the software CD or media is available at time of server re-build etc.
Thanks
Kevin
August 26, 2011 at 8:02 am
Let me admit up front that I'm not a hardware person nor do I know much about what's involved in doing tape backups but what about just standardizing where on the server you keep backups? That's what we're moving towards with all our new server builds. Then the guys in charge of tape backups know to look at a specific drive or folder for each server.
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