Copy tape for offsite storage

[gallows]

We are running NB 6.5.3, Solaris.
Our site is fairly small and we only use a couple of tapes for full back ups. I would like to make a copy of the tapes and send them to an alternate site for off site storage, and keep the originals here on the main site. What is the best way to do this?

Our backups are performed in the evening, so I could easily make a duplicate during the day. The offsite tapes would be rotated monthly, so I would only be using a few extra tapes.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!

 

[nohelp]

Vault?
It can duplicate your backup images for you.
It is an additional license though.

 

[gallows]

Thanks nohelp. I will look into it. We have it but I just never found the time to see how it works.

 

[KoningM]

You can use Storage Lifecycle Policies. This way you can start making a copy of the tapes after the backup is completed.

Vault is also an option but then you will need the vault license. SLP is included default in NBU.

 

[Martin999]

SLP required Advanced Disk, which needs a license unfortunately.

Vault would be ideal for this situation, other possibles are :

SLP (as mentioned)
Inline tape copy (aka mulltiple copies)
Set a final destination storage unit

Martin

 

[it4bizz]

HI gallows, i m learning NB havn't exposed to the working environment just a quick questin , how many master, media and clients you are using in the organisation if its a small one and how many tape drives and tapes u have been using.
thanks in advance.
thankssss

 

[gallows]

Thanks KoningM and Martin!!

it4bizz - Our environment is very small. One Master Server, a tape library, and about a dozen Unix servers and a couple of windows clients. Thats it.

We have a couple servers connected via fibre to a SAN and I am trying to figure out the best way to back those guys up using the fibre instead of the network. Backups for those take a long time)

 

[johngiggs]

gallows,

You can use the bpduplicate -backupid <image> -dstunit <storage_unit_name> or do it from the NBU Admin Console under catalog. You can set the retention level of the second copy to be longer than your original backup if needed also.

John

 

[bolobaboo]

question ...if you try setting following ways..do we still need vault license ?
bpduplicate -backupid <image> -dstunit <storage_unit_name>

Thank you

 

[johngiggs]

I'm almost certain that bpduplicate doesn't require any additional licensing.

You could confirm with your rep, but I don't believe so.

Thanks,

John

 

[Skywalker1957]

It doesn't. It' easy enough to do.

 

[skramer]

This is just what we used to do - duplicate the images and stored a second copy offsite. You can do it manually either by using bpduplicate as stated before or by using the administration console (catalog - duplicate). Or you can script it. You can use the bpcatlist command to get all backup-ids from within the last day and then use the bpduplicate command on the ids found - all started via a cron-job running once a day.

Steph

 

[Skywalker1957]

Off hand, I seem to remember something like this...

Run this at same time everyday....
bpimagelist -d 01/25/2011 -e 01/26/2011 -idonly |awk '{print $8}' > /tmp/images_to_duplicate

You can sanity check your images and check their retentions if you want....

for i in `cat /tmp/images_to_duplicate`; do echo $i; bpimagelist -U -backupid $i; echo " "; done;

Then just duplicate them to tape....
bpduplicate -Bidfile /tmp/images_to_duplicate -dp <dest_pool> -dstunit <dest_stu> -L /tmp/dup_images.log &

Then if you want to promote the 2nd copy to primary copy at some point......
for i in `cat /tmp/images_to_duplicate`; do echo $i; bpimage -npc 2 -backupid $i; done;

Then you can delete copy one.....

for i in `cat /tmp/images_to_duplicate`; do echo $i; bpimage -deletecopy 1 -backupid $i; done;