Data growing what should we do next?

[joepalm]

We are backing up to 24GB tapes each night, initialy the backups only required one tape but now we are using up to 3 tapes. We schedule a full backup each night and this lasts until 11am the next day.

We run 4 Servers including Exchange, what would be my best option? data is still going to expand.

I though may going to one full backup per month and daily incremental or purchasing a larger faster type device.

What other option could you suggest.

Thanks

JP

 

[samsap400]

Hi, we run 4 file servers and 1 Exchange Server Backup.
Level full for save set ALL including all servers and MSEXCH with capacity apprx. 150 GB runs on Saturday Night.
Than we just run incremental backup on save set ALL for all servers and full for MSEXCH every night which makes us apprx. 19 GB of backed-up data.
If your data change frequently and your incremental is high or you really need full backup every night give a try to HP LTO Ultrium tape drives which are fast (30 Mb/s with hardware data compression) and capacity up to 200Gb per media with hardware data compression.
Hope it helps.
Lubor

 

[speculos]

Do you use an autochanger?
What is your backup window?
How many tape drives do you use?
You can have better results with more drives.

I don't think doing a full backup per month is a good idea, because the restore time will be VERY long.
I will recommand a full every week, and daily incremental for example.

Hope it helps.

 

[joepalm]

Thanks for your replies.

We do not use an autochanger
We use ArcServeIt 6.61
We only have the one Tape drive


Thanks

JP