BrightStor v11 Central Database

[Russell5]

Is anyone using the Central database feature of BrightStor 11? I like the idea of keeping the databases in one central location instead of spread out on each backup server. However, I'm concerned at the total size the central database could take up as well as its functionality once it gets really large. Has anyone used this feature that can give their opinion on it?

A quote from STORAGE magazine:

"All backup applications maintain a database or catalog that is absolutely critical to the recovery of data that is backed up. Lose the catalog and you've lost your backups. While some backup applications have mechanisms for reading through tapes and recovery indexes, this can be an onerous - if not impossible - task. The catalog should be treated like any other critical application database. It should preferably be mirrored - or at least RAID-protected - and you should verify successful multiple-copy backup of the database or catelog on a scheduled basis."

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks guys!

 

[davidmichel]

Central DB is recommended for SANs, otherwise I would not use it. What you can do is just point to the SQL server during the install. That way each server will have it's own database but they will all be at the same system. If VLDB is being used skip it, because it will get big and SQL handles large databases much better than VLDB.

As for the trade rag comment that really depends. If you are using VLDB there is a backup option to backup the ARCserve database. The Recover funtion is used to restore the backed up version of the database. Also on tape is the database catalog file for each session so a merge is a relativily quick operation.