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Windows File Server Monthly

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Outsyder

MIS
Jul 20, 2005
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Hi guys.

How do you deal with monthly backups of a Windows File Server? Which contains tons of files...Do you generate a backupset? Create an archive? What is the best procedure?

Thanks.
 
Depends on the retention, number of versions kept, etc... The problem with a monthly archive of a server that has millions of files with a long retentions (only one version kept in an archive) is that the TSM DB will get huge...

Backupsets are means manually tracking - and the restores are difficult.

So if you have more info on the requirements.. may help get you a better answer...
 
Thanks for the answer.
Here is a bit more info. We run a library 3584 with 7 LTO2 drives. The monthly backup of the file server is required to be kept 7 years. It contains about 3 millions files or so...
As of right now, a backupset of this server takes about 2 whole days to complete. It is a bit much...but is there another way? Archiving would drive my DB through the roof...

I though about doing 'multiple' backupsets of that server by doing one backupsets per file space, but my Windows Admin is using a single file space. A huge chunk of space from the SAN...

Unless i am mistaken, those are the only 2 real alternative i have available right now?

thanks.
 
Unfortunately there is no other solution.. I had the same issue. To speed up the backupsets tho, try setting up colocation on the storage pool. What that will do is amalgamate all the incremental backups for a server on to one tape (or 2 or 3..) as necessary.

As the incrementals build up over the period of a month, the "active" files end up getting placed on tons of tapes. The majority of the time is spent finding a file here, a file there on all the tapes.

The downside to using colocation is that you will burn through more scratches.

Another thing you may look into is an image backup. I haven't played much with that, but it might be worth looking into...
 
I recently (last week) started over again with TSM 5.3 and a new TBM3576 library with 3 LTO3 tapes.

We have a big file-server with 6.000.000 files representing 1TB data.

I started a (full) incremental friday and now (saterdaynight) it's almost there.

I'm planning on taking an image of the volume where the files are, I keep you posted.

Ivor
 
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