December 28, 2001 at 9:22 pm
Im curious too - tape faster than disk? If it was I probably still would not do it, but would be a nice capability to have.
Andy
December 30, 2001 at 3:21 pm
I had an admin dept tell me that a backup to tape would be much fater than to disc but it turned out to be lots slower.
Guess there are lots of things involved in the transfer rate. One advantage tape has is that it will be dedicated to the task at that time.
Cursors never.
DTS - only when needed and never to control.
December 30, 2001 at 5:44 pm
I thought it would be slower. It is a better alternative if you have a very large database, but if you can get your backup onto a disk, I'd go that way.
Of course, after I posted, I thought that if you had a dedicated backup server with 5 or more DLT devices (or AIT), you might be able to get disk xfer rates. Of course, that would be pretty $$.
If you check, you will see many vendors are starting to offer backup solutions on disk as an inbetween the live data and tape because tape is too slow. These are what I'd look at, even build a Linux/Samba system with lots of drives as an inbetween.
Steve Jones
December 30, 2001 at 10:34 pm
It will be next week, at least, before I get to the bottom of it. We do have a high end tape system $$$,$$$.
December 31, 2001 at 7:45 am
Like you I assumed the tape would be slower. So I looked at the backup logs of some databases that I have been backing up to disk and Tech has been backing up to tape. In our case, the backup times are almost the same. Sometimes the tape is faster, but it isn't very significant. I know we have a dedicated tape device(don't think it's a server) and may even have 2+ devices (not positive). We're using Veritas Backup Exec. Our databases are small in comparison to most companies(only 3 over 1 GB), so I wouldn't count on the same backup speed as databases get larger. AND, the Veritas backups aren't reliable. I have several 'gaps' of at least 1 entire day or more when the backups did not run. I have also run into this problem when restoring non-database files from Veritas(oh, 'the backup didn't run that night' or 'the tape for that night is bad'). ANYWAY, I'm still not in favor of tape only backups. I'm letting Tech do their tape backups, but I'm still backing up to disk. I may have to rethink this when I have large databases, but for now space/time are not an issue. Interesting discussions.......
January 1, 2002 at 2:52 pm
Interesting. I don't check our Veritas system, only the disk backups. As long as I have enough disk space, I have never had a disk backup fail.
Steve Jones
January 1, 2002 at 4:28 pm
If you're backing up to tape, then you absolutely have to check the event log each day (or build a way to have it send you status) to make sure it was successful. Most backups are scheduled off peak and even if the admin notices, mostly likely will not immediately run but will just fix the problem and let it run again on schedule that night. 9 times out of 10 it doesnt matter. Its that one time when you need to restore and don't have it that life really sucks!
Andy
January 2, 2002 at 8:44 am
And that one time is when the restore will be needed!!! Stick with disk (Seems to be the consensus).
Steve Jones
January 2, 2002 at 9:04 am
Is your Veritas backup using the 'SQL Server database' option? (allows it to backup open database files - Tech made it sound like this was a big deal, but I kept trying to tell them my SQL backups already did that and their backups put my backup files on the tape!)
Haven't seen how it is set up, but according to Tech it sounds exactly like setting up a backup in EM. The Veritas backups are listed in the backup logs, along with my disk backups. I can select a Veritas backup for restore, but when I try to run it I get an error because (obviously) I can't access the tape drive. Anyway, it sounds like you aren't able to see the Veritas backups in the backup logs and if you can't it may be that your Tech dept is not using the 'SQL Server' option - which someone mentioned previously is an option that costs extra $$.
Interesting. I don't check our Veritas system, only the disk backups. As long as I have enough disk space, I have never had a disk backup fail.
Steve Jones
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