No more hiding in the server room
Backups Help...
Okay gang, I'm at a bit of a crossroads in our backup solution at my place. We are very clearly transitioning to virtualization VM Servers and are nearly 1/2 way complete. We have approximately 20 TB of data (that I know of) that I need to back up.
We currently use NetWorker as our legacy backup solution. I have 5 tape arrays that have backed up various systems at various times. Including two Dell PowerVaults 136T's and a Sun L180. I am currently backing up to LTO2 and LTO3. Additionally, we've purchased a couple of copies of VRanger Pro to start backing up VM's, but really only see that as a base-image backup solution.
I inherited a backup solution that is cumbersome, overly complicated and will not support virtualization very well.
So, I went back to my boss and asked the following question. "What ARE we supposed to be backing up? What are our guaranteed SLA's?"
He responded that we are guaranteed to back up a segment of our data that is about 6 TB for 18 months. Everything else - including user files, non-production files, etc. is backed up on a "best effort" basis.
He did not mention the frequency of the backups as we often have people asking for files "from 2 months ago" because they made an edit to something or accidentally hit the delete key.
Other than that - there really are no guidelines or SLA's related to our backups.
So... I ask the SysAdmin Network... where do I start??
Do I leverage NetWorker which I find crappy, but we already own it?
Do I search for an open source solution?
Do I engage one of the 20 vendors that are pushing solutions (and contracting hours) my way?
Should I just join the lemmings and buy $10,000 worth of BackupExec?
I'd like to get out of this rebuild as cheaply as possible, while leveraging as much existing equipment (and old tapes that go back to 2005) as possible.
I, clearly, am having difficulty understanding where to start...
Help me Obi Wan Kenobi's... you're my only hope...
We currently use NetWorker as our legacy backup solution. I have 5 tape arrays that have backed up various systems at various times. Including two Dell PowerVaults 136T's and a Sun L180. I am currently backing up to LTO2 and LTO3. Additionally, we've purchased a couple of copies of VRanger Pro to start backing up VM's, but really only see that as a base-image backup solution.
I inherited a backup solution that is cumbersome, overly complicated and will not support virtualization very well.
So, I went back to my boss and asked the following question. "What ARE we supposed to be backing up? What are our guaranteed SLA's?"
He responded that we are guaranteed to back up a segment of our data that is about 6 TB for 18 months. Everything else - including user files, non-production files, etc. is backed up on a "best effort" basis.
He did not mention the frequency of the backups as we often have people asking for files "from 2 months ago" because they made an edit to something or accidentally hit the delete key.
Other than that - there really are no guidelines or SLA's related to our backups.
So... I ask the SysAdmin Network... where do I start??
Do I leverage NetWorker which I find crappy, but we already own it?
Do I search for an open source solution?
Do I engage one of the 20 vendors that are pushing solutions (and contracting hours) my way?
Should I just join the lemmings and buy $10,000 worth of BackupExec?
I'd like to get out of this rebuild as cheaply as possible, while leveraging as much existing equipment (and old tapes that go back to 2005) as possible.
I, clearly, am having difficulty understanding where to start...
Help me Obi Wan Kenobi's... you're my only hope...
Views: 9
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by J. Hord on -
I'd go ArcServe before I went BackupExec but that's me. Like all projects I'd start by asking the boss what the capital budget is. If that answer is zero then make the crappy solution you have work. If it's deep I'd look into either ArcServe or BE and a Data Domain or other DeDup solution to cut down the number or physical backup destination devices you have to support. On the VM's VMWare VCB works well if you have the space to keep full clones of the VM's otherwise you can always run backup software agents on the guests or just backup the Data volume VMDKs via VCB. Also, if you have a SAN that's storing nearly all you're data things can get easier if you can do VSS snapshots and then backup the snap's directly instead of using agents. Also, depending on the rotation cycle the tapes from 05/06 are probably beyond they're recommended duty cycle and shouldn't be relied on.
my $0.02
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Permalink Reply by Julian Regel on -
We also have a backup system that isn't great at virtualisation support and this is our proposed way forward.
Our backup software is ARCserve (for Unix - not Windows as we have a mixed environment). We currently backup to a Sun SL48 tape library. Although this works for our current needs, it doesn't perform any VM level backups.
The logical way forward would be for us to replace ARCserve with a different backup product. I'm not keen on doing this as the basic backup product is stable and well known within our organisation.
The approach I'm taking is to invest in a large chunk of cheap SAN storage (based on Sun StorageTek 2540 with SATA disks) and will be using the VMware Data Recovery appliance (included free in vSphere 4) to backup VMs to disk over NFS. I will then backup the resulting disk with ARCserve.
This should ultimately give us faster performance (backup to disk before tape), lower licence costs (fewer backup agents required) and does not require a single big switch over to a new solution.
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