Backup software suggestions

We're looking into upgrading our tape backup system. We have three
servers to back up nightly (one Solaris, one Linux, one Win32),
and have a total of about 300 gigs' worth of data (in about 2.2
million files). We are currently using Arkeia running on Solaris
and have been unhappy with the performance on large numbers of
small (~1-2k) files and also with their support.

We don't have Oracle or Exchange, and are running Open File Manager
on the Win32 machine and filesystem-level snapshots on the Linux
and Solaris machines.

I am currently considering Netvault, Netbackup, and Arcserve, but
am looking into other options. Backup Exec is useless because it
can't do incremental backups from Unix machines. We are currently
on gigE and backing up to DLT7000, but will likely upgrade to LTO
or SDLT at the time of the upgrade.

What else is worth considering? I like the ability to do fast
restores with Arkeia (would never go back to dump/tar/cpio), but
we don't have much need to do restores on a regular basis--the
backups are primarily for archival and disaster recovery purposes.
My preference would be to run the server on a Unix platform (Solaris
or Linux), but I'm not ruling out Windows at this point, either.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

On Wed, 4 May 2005 16:48:40 +0000 (UTC), (Scott
Norwood) wrote:

We're looking into upgrading our tape backup system. We have three
servers to back up nightly (one Solaris, one Linux, one Win32),
and have a total of about 300 gigs' worth of data (in about 2.2
million files). We are currently using Arkeia running on Solaris
and have been unhappy with the performance on large numbers of
small (~1-2k) files and also with their support.

We don't have Oracle or Exchange, and are running Open File Manager
on the Win32 machine and filesystem-level snapshots on the Linux
and Solaris machines.

I am currently considering Netvault, Netbackup, and Arcserve, but
am looking into other options. Backup Exec is useless because it
can't do incremental backups from Unix machines. We are currently
on gigE and backing up to DLT7000, but will likely upgrade to LTO
or SDLT at the time of the upgrade.

What else is worth considering? I like the ability to do fast
restores with Arkeia (would never go back to dump/tar/cpio), but
we don't have much need to do restores on a regular basis--the
backups are primarily for archival and disaster recovery purposes.
My preference would be to run the server on a Unix platform (Solaris
or Linux), but I'm not ruling out Windows at this point, either.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

First thing is no one will help with the millions of small files. The
only thing that alleviates the pain of that is block level, which most
backup software can't do.

I hate to say this but I believe Veritas has Flash Backup capabilities
for all of the platforms you mentioned. This isn't block level but it
does alleviate the tree walk by bit mapping the directory structure.
Linux may not be supported atm but I'm sure there's a version for
Windows and Solaris.

Outside of that I would suggest LTO. We' moved from SDLT 320 to LTO2
and the difference was huge. Of course that may be completely
attributable to the fact that we got rid of the crappy fiber to scsi
bridges (SDLT has no native fiber capabilities).

NetVault is awesome for NetApp backups but not too sure about anything
else, never tested it. Given you're mainstream platforms I would say
any vendor will work. Veritas' only strong point (imo) is that they
have clients for every odd OS/platform/software you can think of. So
basically they backup anything, but they don't do any one or two
things great. They're mediocre at everything, but not everyone can
say they do everything.

~F

I see you have unix in the bunch... I've never used AMANDA to back up
Windows file systems however it can be done, some way. AMANDA is a
flexible program and can do almost anything you need; including
emulating a tape robot on a disk volume which can shrink backup windows
by orders of magnitude. The "tapeio" module is VERY handy for testing
your configs for a real robot (as it is fast). http://www.amanda.org/

Scott Norwood wrote:

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Legato Networker, steep learning curve, but probably the best out there.

I have 35 Win32 servers total, 4 with more than 2 million files on each.
We run incrementals 3x daily and staggered weekly fulls. No
performance problems at all, and I backup around 400GB compressed each
day. We send savesets to Disk then stage to LTO2 tape at 36 hours old.

tM