Mirrored Backups
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We have recently implemented CommVault backups (backup databases directly to tape). Does have anyone any experiences with this? Should this replace native backups, or should this be run in addition to native backup (done to local disk, and then backed up to tape - this is what we were doing so far.)
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I dont have a lot of faith in tape, for no rational reason - never had one fail, but I've heard about incidents where they have. As long as you have the space to support it backup to disk and then disk to tape seems like a good belt & suspenders strategy.
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It isn't that I don't have faith in tape, it's that I don't have faith in backup agents that directly back up a database. I have had problems with them before, as has my current employer before I started here. I back up to disk, then to a snap server across the network, then those backups are captured by our Tivoli system without using their backup agent.
One of our databases shuts itself down then FTPs the database across the country. If something happened to our sites, the vendor can load the last capture onto their restore servers and cut payroll checks for everybody.
One important thing for people to remember is that when you tell a backup wizard to verify, it is only verifying the structural integrity of the backup, it is not comparing the contents of the backup vs the original database. It is not a good idea to become complacent believing that since I verify my backups that all is well.
You've got to restore databases from tape and compare them in order to know that your backup is good, and even then you've only verified that that one backup works.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font] -
Bob, I can see why that strategy makes sense, curious if you compared doing a local backup and then copy vs direct backup to other machine as far as overall performance? I didn't have a good 100g file to test with!
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Well, probably because I don't really know how! The existing system works fine and is plenty fast for our needs. One advantage of doing it the way you suggest would be having the backup available locally on both machines. We're using SQL Server 2005, and I'm really not that much of an expert in the new SSIS environment.
Student of SQL and Golf, Master of Neither -
Well...by strange coincidence I do know of a company located near you that has an SSIS course!
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Hmmm. Who among us didn't see that response coming?
Student of SQL and Golf, Master of Neither -
And I hate being predictable.
Maybe we can talk you into an article about your backup strategy and contrast it with how long to back up locally/copy to remote (no SSIS needed). The 'we' being the masses here at SSC.
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Hi,
Does this option work with SQL Lite Speed 2005?
I had one suggestion in case of a failure: we can set this as a sql job in step1 with mirroring in case the step1 fails we can direct it to step2 on failure which would be a Litespeed or native backup.
Thanks,
Razi
Razi, M.
http://questivity.com/it-training.html -
I imagine LS would have to implement it natively and I have no idea if they have - maybe someone else can comment.
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