nas storage

[Duke]

You don't really want to be doing daily full backups anyway, unless you're dealing with really small pools of data. Most people do a weekly full and daily differentials - would that work for you?

 

How much space do you need (to actually use) on your new storage if/when you buy it, and how much space does your old (current) NAS have if you wipe it? (is that an option once you've moved data to the new storage?)

 

EDIT: It'd also be useful to have an idea of what your daily data change is like too, if you know it.

 

Chris

Edited February 6, 2013 by Duke

[jjohnsoncantell]

We currently perform our daily backup (working set-changed today) which average between 8/20gb of which 4gb is sims database and weekly backups (working set - changed in last x days) which range between 80/120gb.

 

We will need around 1.6tb on our new storage box but this will climb much higher as i will be able to relax our quotas a lot. Our existing box will have 1.8tb free when its been wiped. When you say daily data change can you explain to me a little more what you mean?

 

Thanks

James

[Duke]

It sounds like your 'working set' description may be what I'm referring to with full and differential backups. When I say daily data change, I mean that if you did a full backup at 6PM one day, then you wanted to backup only the new/changed data at 6PM the next day, how much data would that normally be?

 

I'm proposing that you do the following:

 

Weekly full backup, probably started on a Friday evening to finish before Monday morning (I'm assuming you don't have things going on in the weekends). This full backup would grab all the files/data that are important to you.

Daily differential backup from Mon-Thurs. This will start on Monday evening, and grab all the files that are new/changed since the Friday evening full backup took place. Then Tues, weds, Thurs it will do the same thing.

 

(You could do incremental backups each day; this would mean that Monday would grab the changes since Friday, Tuesday would grab the changes since Monday, Wednesday would grab the changes since Tuesday, etc. This would take up less space as you're only grabbing the changes since the last backup of any kind, rather than the changes since the last full backup, but it's more fiddly to manage in my experience and means doing a restore takes longer)

 

Lets aim on the high side then, if I've understood your figures right:

 

Friday/weekend full backup: 120GB

Monday backup: 20GB

Tuesday backup: 40GB

Wednesday backup: 60GB

Thursday backup: 80GB

TOTAL for the week: 320GB

 

1.8TB / 320GB = 5.6

 

In very, very, very rough theory, you could keep 5 weeks of backups on there. In reality, you might only keep the differentials for 2 weeks and the fulls for 5 weeks.

 

Am I making any sense?

Chris

[jjohnsoncantell]

I see what you are saying Chris, sounds like the only difference between your plan and mine is the full backup at the end of each week. In an ideal world i would love to do that but for us a full backup (by which I assume you mean everything, all user data and shared area data) currently stands well over 1tb which would swallow half our storage in one go. We dont dedupe or anything like that either As an example with our current set up our last weeks figures were 18gb,8gb,8gb,13gb,112gb.

[Duke]

Ah okay, so we're actually looking at the following?

 

Weekend full backup: 1TB+

Monday backup: 18GB

Tuesday backup: 26GB

Wednesday backup: 34GB

Thursday backup: 47GB

Friday backup: 159GB

TOTAL for the week: Over 1.2TB

 

I can see how that would cause you problems (if it makes you feel any better, a full backup at the job i finished last week was over 4TB)

 

So, we need more backup storage. Can you remind me what/how many disks are currently in the box? How would you feel about putting in bigger ones, if it's possible?

 

Failing that, do you have any budget to buy something like a big, dumb, cheap QNAP and hang it off the back off this box via iSCSI for extra storage? (or use as iSCSI by itself if it had enough storage on its own)

 

Cheers,

Chris

Edited February 7, 2013 by Duke
mis-spelled my own name, bad times...

[jjohnsoncantell]

Hi Chris,

 

Sorry it took so long to reply. Had a week off and promised myself i would avoid all work and actually have a break. Im reluctant to spend any more on the existing server due to its age so your cheap nas option sounds like the best but just replacing drives on the old server would still be cheaper.. Im still hoping to get some sort of use from our ultrium4 drive but its the restoring data part that takes the time.. I went for the hp storage server in the end for the new nas so now im looking at refining our backup methods.

[Duke]

Hmm, I'd price up a cheap SAN/NAS vs buying new drives then as your next step. Do you have a budget in mind? Big, simple storage should be cheap enough these days (cheap as in a couple of £k)

[jjohnsoncantell]

Ive been looking at the qnap as a backup box as you suggested, like a 6/8tb model. The one thing im worried about is that we use backup exec 2010 which uses agents on the server. Im guessing qnap uses a bespoke o/s so how would that work?

[Duke]

Is this just for dumping data to, not backing up data from? If so then you don't need to worry about agents, they're only used for the servers you backup data from. Backup Exec can actually use CIFS (Windows shares) if it can't find an agent, so you technically could back up data from it if you wanted. Generally for a SAN/NAS, you'd look for one that has NDMP support, which Backup Exec can use even if it doesn't know the OS.

 

Anyway, back on track. You could either make a Windows share on the QNAP and point Backup Exec directly to it as a remote B2D folder, or (and I strongly recommend this one!) create an iSCSI LUN and mount it on the Backup Exec server. Backup Exec will then see this as a local hard drive and you'll be able to create a B2D folder on it.

 

Chris

[jjohnsoncantell]

Ah I understand, thanks for clearing that up Yep its just for backing up to.. Ive never used iscsi before but from what i know i can use it across the network cant i? I would prefer to be able to locate this backup box somewhere in another block for safety purposes.

[Duke]

Yep, iSCSI is SCSI data inside an IP packet and runs over standard networking. I'd recommend a 1Gb minimum link between the QNAP and the Backup Exec server if possible.

 

I was going to explain how to set it up, but QNAP have done it for me: QNAP - Resources - Tutorials - How to create and use the iSCSI target service on the QNAP NAS

 

Edited February 22, 2013 by Duke

[jjohnsoncantell]

Spot on, thanks. Do most rely on this method for backup now? Im still a little wary of relying on a hdd based box to backup to. Im so used to having tapes and having them securely stored in a fire safe it seems so much safer than relying on drives as a backup.

What do you think would be the best procedure if i wanted to keep my master backup, dailies and weeklies on the the dumb nas but also keep a tape backup of the master and weeklies?

[Duke]

Most people don't have the time/space/money for tapes these days, so a purely-disk-based backup solution is entirely acceptable. Having said that, the arguably best-of-both-worlds solution is B2D2T - backup to disk to tape. You'd do your regular daily backups to disk overnight which are nice and quick, then you'd copy those backups onto tape (via a method that doesn't put any additional load onto your main network) during the day. You might onto put your weeklies onto tape, or you might have the time/space to put your dailies on there too.

 

I'd suggest your weekly full and daily differentials go on to the SAN. They'll be quicker and you'll be able to do a full restore from disk if needed without having to play guess the tape.

I'd then suggest you either find a way to do B2D2T, or do an additional backup straight to tape.

 

How often you backup to tape is up to you, but if you had to do a full backup from tape (rather than just restoring an archived file), how long would it before before the backups were as good as useless? For example, if you did tape backups on a Sunday and everything died on a Friday, how would your finance/HR/whatever department feel if you told them you'd lost almost a week of work? Obviously ideally you'd backup everything all the time, but that's not really practical, so try to find a balance between what people want and what you can reasonably manage.

 

If the QNAP is iSCSI connected to the BE server and the tape drive is also connected to the BE server, you should be able to push the backup data to tape on a schedule that suits you.

[jjohnsoncantell]

Thanks Duke, all sorted now with our new box, went for an HP X1600 and will soon be buying a qnap to use as a backup box in a different block. Your insight has been most helpful and is much appreciated. Hopefully the way you have suggested will work for us.

 

Thanks again.

James

[Duke]

Thanks Duke, all sorted now with our new box, went for an HP X1600 and will soon be buying a qnap to use as a backup box in a different block. Your insight has been most helpful and is much appreciated. Hopefully the way you have suggested will work for us.

 

Cool, sounds good!

 

Just post in here or make a new thread and PM me if you get stuck, I'm sure someone will be able to help.

 

Good luck with it all,

Chris

[catshilllearning]

I've put a number WD NAS drives in primary schools. They work really well as media archives and are much appreciated by schools who've been trying for years to declutter their managed network drives.

Brett