QNAP for backup solution

[itgeek]

Hi We are looking to change our backup solution. We currently have backup exec looking after the file server and mis etc. We are running veeam to look after the vms and the veeam file then goes to tapes. The problem we have is that our backup exec 11d server is taking a long time to backup and write to tape. The server only has 1 nic and a pv124t lto2 drive in it. Any recomendation?

 

 

Thanks

[jamesfed]

We changed from Backup Exec to System Centre DPM 2010 and instantly got a 10x boost in the speed at which things backed up.

 

So maybe give the trial download a go and see what the results are for you?

[RobFuller]

I also use DPM 2010 with 2x QNAP boxes connected via iscsi to provide the disk storage, very good solution which we are very happy with. Speed is very good and we back up some massive VMs (Hyper-V) and video files without issue. Note that DPM although is only a backup server can be resource hungry sometimes.

[glennda]

I use backupPC (which will only backup shares and physical data) for my backups. Runs on linux and is as easy to setup as apt-get install backuppc

 

then tell it the servers - the drive letters and a username/password. Due to the way it stores the backups it also reduces the amount of disk space when compared to a lot of others. My backups run really quickly.

 

I have it on a custom made super micro chassis. But also run it on a HP MicroServer for monthly backups.

[gshaw]

How is your tape drive hooked up to the server?

[dave.81]

We've got 2 QNAP boxes, one is used for general resources so they aren't filling up our file server. The other is the other end of site and is our backup box. The resources also rsync to the backup box daily.

 

We use Veeam to backup the hosts and windows backup on a couple of physical servers and have been impressed with the speed of both writing to the box.

 

Have been very impressed with them only issue i do get is the web manager can be a bit flacky but rarely need it to be honest.

[PaulKonec]

A simple answer is for you to upgrade your Backup Exec to the latest version and to put in something like Overland NEO 200s with 2 x LTO-4 drives (preferably SAS rather than SCSI). You don't say how much data you have or how many slots you have in the PV124T (8 or 16). But the NEO 200s with 12 or 24 slots should be plenty using LTO-4 as this has 4 times the capacity of the LTO-2. The LTO-4 drives will allow you to read your existing LTO-2 backup tapes and using 2 drives will allow you to run 2 backup jobs at the same time, decreasing your backup times even if the individual backups themselves don’t get any faster.

Using a newer version of Backup Exec will also allow you to specify larger block sizes for the backups, which really helps with the faster drives.

[zag]

Forget tapes, thats old technology. Unless of course your google and need to backup a million jiggawats a week

 

Qnap NAS boxes are great for this type of thing but I personally just have a couple of 2tb hard disks in our backupexec machine. Just make sure the backup machine is in a separate location and your sorted.

 

Oh and use the R3 release of backupexec 2010, much better and lots of bug fixes especially for hyper-v and vmware.