On 4/13/00 at 12:27 PM, Jan.Schepers@nl.origin-it.com (Schepers, Jan) wrote:
Hi all,
We have been facing some explosive growth during the past 6 months and have grown past our current backup solution. We are currently backing up via a linux box that has our 740 nfs mounted. Backups are taking sometimes 24-30 hours for incrementals and all weekend for fulls.
What I am looking for is info on how others are backing up 200G volumes on 740's or 760's. I just purchased a pair of 760's and am going to need a nice stable reliable backup system for them.
Looking at the responses sofar, most of you agree on: o directly attached tape devices and o the use of NDMP software
For the latter there are 2 to 3 solutions. What I'd like to know is how to determine the sizing of the master backup server for each of the solutions. o How much diskspace do I need for the index database? o What CPU/memory is required for handling a say 1 GB index Dbase? o Network requirements? o other?
Can anyone comment ?
Yann
We use a Sun E250 (w/dual 400 mhz processors) filled with 9 GB drives for our ~3TB of NetApp data and found this to be inadequeate. Then again, the nature of our business produces large numbers of small files- we have more than 8 million files on just one volume of one of our filers. We eventually had to add a Sun A1000 (w/5 18 GB disks) to the E250 to have enough room to hold all of our indexes.
If I had to do it again, we would forego the local storage on the E250 and get an E220 instead and purchase the A1000 with it.
Incidentally, we use Workstation Solutions Quick Restore and directly attach Overland Data DLT7000 tape library units to each of our filers.
If you have numbers regarding how many files you're indexing in a given size volume, a company like Workstation Solutions should be able to accurately calculate your index space needs.
My personal advice on this subject from direct experience: get a lot more than you need, especially if you're growing.
Good luck, Derek Kelly www.genomecorp..com