December 31, 2008 at 10:32 am
We are currently using Backup Exec for our system and database backups, which are backing up directly to tape storage. We recently moved our datacenter across country to our parent company headquarters. During this time we decided to test our recovery process and found that one of our databases takes over 24 hours to recover from tape, and the database is only 90 GB. This seems absolutely riduculous to me. However my guess is that it is because of the tape. I would like to recommend a new backup/recovery plan to my CIO. My thought was to backup up the database to a network share somewhere and then have backup exec backup the backup file to tape. Does anyone have any better ideas or suggestions?
December 31, 2008 at 11:06 am
That's the way I would recommend to do it. Back it up somewhere where you have quick access to it in case you need to do a quick restore due to a whoops or corruption or some such. Then write it out to tape for archival/off site storage for the Oh no the datacenter is just plain gone type of scenario.
Other options are of course to get better/faster tape drives, or you could even look into other storage mediums if it's within your budget.
Also check and see if you are doing HW or SW compression on the backup as it's writing to tape as that may take a bit longer as well to uncompress as it's restoring...
-Luke.
December 31, 2008 at 11:09 am
Actually, the very fastest option might be to back it up to locally attached storage, and THEN copy it somewhere once the backup is done. Backup involves a lot of reading and re-reading and verifying of the data, so you can help performance by not saturating your network with backup traffic.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
December 31, 2008 at 11:35 am
As Matt very astutely corrected me, backup locally or on a LUN Attached to your SAN or however you can get the best Disk IO for your actual backup process, then copy it to the network and write to tape from there as that will offload the disk IO (of the local to tape procedure) from your DB server and onto your file server.
The write locally and copy to a network share is what I do and I guess what I assumed the OP meant when she said backup to a network share.
You know what happens when you assume...
Thanks Matt.
-Luke.
Viewing 4 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply