SUMMARY: Backup Soltion

From: Conner McCleod (nimrha@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Jul 17 1998 - 11:00:32 CDT


Thanks to:
Maurice Levie
James Wendling
Scott F. Woods
Jeff Wasilko
postmaster@aamta.com
Michael Kriss
Bismark Espinoza
Rick Niziak
Administrator@FOCUS-
Peter L. Wargo
Karl Vogel
Brooke King 6532
Sean Ward
Ian Camm
MARC.NEWMAN@chase.co
Max Trummer
Matti Siltanen
Charlie Mengler
Rick Lantaigne

Special thanks to:
vogelke@c17mis.region2.wpafb.af.mil
lantaign@nortel.ca
charliem@anchorchips.com
sfw@adc.idt.com
kriss@fnal.gov
plw@ncgr.org
vogelke@c17mis.region2.wpafb.af.mil
ian.camm@sse.eu.sony.co.jp
charliem@anchorchips.com
lantaign@nortel.ca

The general consensus was to get a DLT7000 drive. They store 35G native
and 70G compressed, and they can write at up to 5MB/sec. Most people
suggested getting Legato, however, some people suggested a free backup
package called AMANDA that uses ufsdump. AMANDA can be found at:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/amanda/ There was a mentioned of a
package called Budtool at http://www.iguard.com/products/btdata1.html.

I am going with the DLT7000 drive for several reasons. First it is
supported by my SUN Maintanance Agreement. Second, I get a 28% discount
from ITOCHU in New York for the part ($10,400 retail; $7,488.00 discount
+ $45 for cables). As for software, I am going to go with AMANDA (is
free).

Conner McCleod

ps. I included only a few of the responses. Thanks to all the prompt
replies!
____________________________________________________________________

A DLT7000 will store 35 gig native and 70 gig compressed on a
 single tape and I believe it writes at about 6megByte/s. We have a
 DLT4000 which stores 20 gig native and 40 gig compressed and it has
 worked flawlessly so far (much better than the 8505xl stacker we
have).

 The tapes are expensive (about $100 a tape), but it is much
 faster and higher density than 8mm.

 I think you get get a single DLT7000 drive for about $5,000.

 ------------------------------------------------------------------
 | Scott Woods phone: 770-497-2948
 |
 | CAD Engineer email: sfw@adc.idt.com
______________________________________________________________________

If you can stop your Oracle database for a short time, this is
 what we use to do. It provided for a safe Oracle backup that could
be done with regular Unix tools and / or bare bones SolsticeBackup.
You will need extra disk space of course. So I guess it's pay up one
way or the other.

 As for your management, ask them what the cost would be if the
 system was down for 2 days while it was being recovered. Can they
 afford that? Tally up the lost productivity, sales, face, etc...
Often the equipment pays for itself the first time it's used to
recover. Get their decision in writing !

 1- Stop / shutdown Oracle
 2- Do a cold Oracle backup i.e. copy all your Oracle files,
 db,ctl, etc...
    to a scratch filesystem, FS2. You can likely pipe it
 through your favorite compression utility to save disk space.
 3- Restart Oracle
 4- Backup the rest of the system (excluding your Oracle stuff
 copied) and FS2 with whatever tool you want.

 The Exabyte Mammoth drives are in the 40GB capacity range. They
 can also read your current 8mm tapes.

 Consider fast/wide SCSI for the tape unit if you don't have it
 already.

 Rick (lantaign@nortel.ca)
______________________________________________________________________

 You're looking to back up at least 10GB per hour; are you
 sure you want to insist on one tape? A tape jukebox would cost
quite a bit, but how about a stack of 2 or 4 drives that you load by
hand once a day?

    The advantage to this approach is having all tapes running at
 the same time; if you back up disks on separate controllers
 simultaneously, you'll get the most bang for your buck.

    Also, if you have to restore a lot of files, how long will it
 take you to search through 1 80GB tape as opposed to (say) 4 smaller
 ones?

    Do you have to use 8-mm tapes? They take up over twice as
 much storage volume as a 4-mm tape (I measured). Sun sells FlexiPack
 units of multiple 4-mm DDS-2 drives; we use them for our backups and
 they work like a champ. One tape holds 8 GB using ufsdump; 10 of
those running in parallel and you'll have your backups done in under
three hours.

    Are you backing up database files (Oracle, Sybase, etc)? We
 have Oracle, and we were able to reduce a 750-Mbyte dump to 70-Mb
 by compressing the DB files to a different filesystem before
 running ufsdump.

 --
 Karl Vogel
 ASC/YCOA, Wright-Patterson AFB, OH 45433, USA
 vogelke@c17mis.region2.wpafb.af.mil
______________________________________________________________________

I don't know $ pricing but you should look at the DLT units. The
 DLT7000 does 35GB (uncompressed) onto one tape and if my DLT4000 (20GB
uncompressed) and data is anything to judge it by I get at least 2.5:1
compression (ie 50GB+). You can fit these into jukebox units a a later
date of which the smallest I have seen is 7 tapes. Sun resell DLT units
(atleast they do in the UK).

 You might also want to look at some backup software called
 Budtool from Intelligaurd software. It uses standard backup commands so
you only by the server software and you do not need licenses for clients
like with Networker. It will also backup Oracle databases etc. You can
find details on this product at
http://www.iguard.com/products/btdata1.html .

 I have been using Budtool and my DLT unit to backup ~74GB of
 data since August last year without a single problem that wasn't user
error and at an average of 1.7MB per second (takes less than 12 hours
for a full backup) with the Budturbo optional software loaded on my main
(60GB) server.

 Good luck,
 Ian

 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 Ian Camm Tel: +44 1256 388711
 Principal Systems Administrator Fax: +44 1256 388703
 Sony Semiconductor Europe Email:
 ian.camm@sse.eu.sony.co.jp
 Design Centre
 The Crescent, Jays Close
 Basingstoke, Hampshire
 RG22 4DE, UK
 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Just 2 cents worth for your consideration-
 For years & on almost every job, I've been faced
 with a similar problem; too much disk capacity &
 not enough tape capacity or hours in the night.

 1) get a "BIG" disk that is nothing more than a collector
         for incremental backups. The incremental backups
         run nightly disk-to-disk. During the day ufsdump
         this volume to tape & deleted all container files.
 2) Get enough tape capacity such that you do a full backup
         on 20% of your disk storage a night. Over the course
         of a week, each volume get a full level 0 dump. You
         load up a tape before departing & let cron run the
         backups while you are sleeping.

 HTH!

-- 
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 Anchor Chips                    Network/IT Manager
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