Need a consensus on best practices for File System Devices

[jesseroscoe]

I am fairly new to using Arcserve 11.1 and have been unable to find good documentation for using FSDs. I have tried searching through this forum with some success, but I would like your opinions all wrapped up neatly in this thread.

I have Arcserve 11.1 on Windows Server 2003 with 700GB of attached hard disk storage. I am using it to back up a handful of other 2003 servers. I would like to create the following type of backup(s) for each server.

Mon-Thurs - Differential (overwritten each week)
Friday - Full (overwritten each Friday)
Last day of month - Full (overwritten last day of following month).

Should all of this be part of the same custom job (one for each server), or separate jobs?
How many FSDs do I need to create for each job, and should they all have the same name?
How many groups?
Do I have to make any manual changes to the save/scratch set configurations?
Settings for archive bit?
Any other tips/instructions I should be aware of when using FSDs with Arcserve?

Any help would be great. Any other resources would be appreciated as well. Most documentation covers tape backups and not too much on FSDs.

Thanks,
Jesse

 

[vschumpy]

http://supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=TEC339226

 

[jesseroscoe]

Thank you for the link. I have read much of this document and the documents that it references, but it is still not completely clear. It states that GFS rotations require 21 or 23 FSDs for a years worth of backups. If I am using a custom rotation as suggested in my previous post, how do i make sure i have just the right number of FSDs?

 

[vschumpy]

There isn't a custom scheme that will do what you want with the full at the end of the month (unless you manually put exceptions in there). However, assuming you are copying to tape at some point, then 5 FSD's should be all that you need - assuming that you just create 1 job with all of the servers in.

BTW r11.5 has much improved handling of disk backup and automated policy based disk staging, but this is not a free upgrade from r11.1 unless you purchased upgrade protection when you purchased r11.1.

 

[mdcr]

vschumpy -
I am copying those backups from FSDs to tape, but if I then need to retrieve something from those tapes, you can't just restore directly from tape, right? Is it like a two part restore; once from tape to FSD and then from FSD to original location? In our case, we are attempting to restore the tape to FSD, and the header .ctf file is not being restored. Is there a guide on how to proceed with that two part process?

 

[vschumpy]

No, simply merge the actual tape into the database and restore from the tape. The tape copy is an exact copy of the original FSD, no need to do a 2 part restore. If you look at the document link above it explains this.