Hello all, I am looking for suggestions about how to improve backup performance at my company. Following is a brief summary of our architecture.
We have approximately 25 servers, all running Windows 2000 Server SP4. We are using BackupExec for Windows Servers 9.1, with remote agents installed on all of the servers. I have two of the servers configured as backup servers, and the backup servers each have an Ultra320 SCSI adapter connected to an HP Ultrium 1 tape drive. All of my servers have gigabit ethernet NICs and are connected via a Cisco gigabit switch at 1 Gbps. The two backup servers each back up half of the servers.
Right now a full system backup takes 12-14 hours from start to finish, including verify. The full backups run from 8PM until completion, during the lowest period of system utilization. Most of the servers are multi-CPU with 3-4 GB of RAM and direct-attached RAID 5 arrays, so they should be more than beefy enough to run a backup. As it stands now, we can just barely fit the full backups on a pair of data cartridges (one for each tape drive). When reviewing my backup logs, I have been seeing a maximum backup speed of around 512 MB per minute, even when the server is backing up it's own local disks.
So my questions are this:
1. Is there anyway to actually get better throughput than what I'm seeing on my backups? Throughput of around 8 MBytes/sec wouldn't be suprising if I were backing up a remote server across a 100 Mbit connection, but it seems that's where I'm topping out in all circumstances (local Ultra320 arrays, 1 Gbit LAN connections, etc).
2. Right now the backup window is around 12 hours. I really can't let it go much longer than that because we're starting to hit production hours. If I can't get higher throughput than I'm already getting for backups, I may have to look into something like disk-based backups. But I'm reluctant to drop $30,000-$40,000 on a disk-based backup that will accommodate our current and future needs.
3. With the anticipated growth at my company, I suspect that we're going to start running into multiple tapes for the full backups pretty soon. I want to avoid having to change tapes in the middle of the night (as I do sleep). Going to an autoloader might be feasible if we can get better throughput (i.e., shorter backup windows), and that would be cheaper than buying a disk-based system.
What do you guys think?
We have approximately 25 servers, all running Windows 2000 Server SP4. We are using BackupExec for Windows Servers 9.1, with remote agents installed on all of the servers. I have two of the servers configured as backup servers, and the backup servers each have an Ultra320 SCSI adapter connected to an HP Ultrium 1 tape drive. All of my servers have gigabit ethernet NICs and are connected via a Cisco gigabit switch at 1 Gbps. The two backup servers each back up half of the servers.
Right now a full system backup takes 12-14 hours from start to finish, including verify. The full backups run from 8PM until completion, during the lowest period of system utilization. Most of the servers are multi-CPU with 3-4 GB of RAM and direct-attached RAID 5 arrays, so they should be more than beefy enough to run a backup. As it stands now, we can just barely fit the full backups on a pair of data cartridges (one for each tape drive). When reviewing my backup logs, I have been seeing a maximum backup speed of around 512 MB per minute, even when the server is backing up it's own local disks.
So my questions are this:
1. Is there anyway to actually get better throughput than what I'm seeing on my backups? Throughput of around 8 MBytes/sec wouldn't be suprising if I were backing up a remote server across a 100 Mbit connection, but it seems that's where I'm topping out in all circumstances (local Ultra320 arrays, 1 Gbit LAN connections, etc).
2. Right now the backup window is around 12 hours. I really can't let it go much longer than that because we're starting to hit production hours. If I can't get higher throughput than I'm already getting for backups, I may have to look into something like disk-based backups. But I'm reluctant to drop $30,000-$40,000 on a disk-based backup that will accommodate our current and future needs.
3. With the anticipated growth at my company, I suspect that we're going to start running into multiple tapes for the full backups pretty soon. I want to avoid having to change tapes in the middle of the night (as I do sleep). Going to an autoloader might be feasible if we can get better throughput (i.e., shorter backup windows), and that would be cheaper than buying a disk-based system.
What do you guys think?
