Kojak_UK
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Dell PowerVault DL2100 Powered By Symantec and Continuous Protection Server Setup and Best Practices
We currently have 1 SBS 2003 R2 Premium Server, acting as DC, Exchange and SQL Server with a Windows 2008 R2 standard server as a member server running SQL server for SAP business one. The SQL is part of the SAP business one. We have a Powervault DL2100 running Symantec BackupExec 2010 R2 with 750GB available for the backups on RAID5 and a PowerVault 124T with 2 magazines of 16 LTO-4 tapes capacity in total.
The idea was to have full backups done on the DL2100 every evening so they are done within the backup window and then copied to the tape overnight for offsite storage the next morning. The data to be backued are around 80GB (25GB images, 25GB emails, 25GB documents like pdf's, spreadsheets, word... and 5GB of SQL databases). Obviously there is the windows files and AD data to be backed up as well.
The full backup option on daily basis is the more preferable option for me because if something goes wrong directors will be breathing down my neck especially because the do not understand IT and they expect everything to be there at a click of a button.
I now want to integrate to the backup solution the Symantec Continuous Protection Server that came with the DL2100, to give me the ability to restore files / exchange data from snapshots during the day and not from the night before only.
Apologies for my ignorance with regards to the CPS but reading the admin guide of the CPS, it mentions that 4 seperate volumes are needed: system, journal, snapshots and backup volume.
The way I understand the concept of CPS is, that it backs up the business servers to the backup volume, and then the backed up data are snapshoted hence the snapshots volumes. The system volume I assume is the holding area for System State and
Shadow Copy Components to be backed up. Finally the journal volume is used to hold the journals for the dynamic data changes. Further down the same admin guide it mentions about the indexing directory that needs to be installed on a separate volume. Do I need 5 volumes in total and not 4?
If not, then is the above 4 volumes assumption correct? Am I right to think that for performance purpose the 4 volumes need to be on 4 diferrent physical hard drives? Can and/or should the hard drives be in RAID configuration? And if in RAID, would a RAID 5 be suitable at least for the backup and snapshot volumes? Would the Shadow and Journal and possibly the Index volumes need to be in RAID 5 or RAID 1 or 0 is enough or even no RAID at all?
The DL2100 has a H800 raid card and to one of its ports a DELL MD1200 is connected with 12 x 300GB 6Gbps SAS hard drives which gives me the ability to create 4 x RAID 5 volumes with 3 Hard drives each, or 2 x RAID 5 with 3 hard drives and the rest of the drives can be configured on RAID 0 or 1.
Please advise me if my thinking of how the CPS works is correct and also for the volumes/disks configurations.
Many thanks in advance
Kojak UK
The idea was to have full backups done on the DL2100 every evening so they are done within the backup window and then copied to the tape overnight for offsite storage the next morning. The data to be backued are around 80GB (25GB images, 25GB emails, 25GB documents like pdf's, spreadsheets, word... and 5GB of SQL databases). Obviously there is the windows files and AD data to be backed up as well.
The full backup option on daily basis is the more preferable option for me because if something goes wrong directors will be breathing down my neck especially because the do not understand IT and they expect everything to be there at a click of a button.
I now want to integrate to the backup solution the Symantec Continuous Protection Server that came with the DL2100, to give me the ability to restore files / exchange data from snapshots during the day and not from the night before only.
Apologies for my ignorance with regards to the CPS but reading the admin guide of the CPS, it mentions that 4 seperate volumes are needed: system, journal, snapshots and backup volume.
The way I understand the concept of CPS is, that it backs up the business servers to the backup volume, and then the backed up data are snapshoted hence the snapshots volumes. The system volume I assume is the holding area for System State and
Shadow Copy Components to be backed up. Finally the journal volume is used to hold the journals for the dynamic data changes. Further down the same admin guide it mentions about the indexing directory that needs to be installed on a separate volume. Do I need 5 volumes in total and not 4?
If not, then is the above 4 volumes assumption correct? Am I right to think that for performance purpose the 4 volumes need to be on 4 diferrent physical hard drives? Can and/or should the hard drives be in RAID configuration? And if in RAID, would a RAID 5 be suitable at least for the backup and snapshot volumes? Would the Shadow and Journal and possibly the Index volumes need to be in RAID 5 or RAID 1 or 0 is enough or even no RAID at all?
The DL2100 has a H800 raid card and to one of its ports a DELL MD1200 is connected with 12 x 300GB 6Gbps SAS hard drives which gives me the ability to create 4 x RAID 5 volumes with 3 Hard drives each, or 2 x RAID 5 with 3 hard drives and the rest of the drives can be configured on RAID 0 or 1.
Please advise me if my thinking of how the CPS works is correct and also for the volumes/disks configurations.
Many thanks in advance
Kojak UK
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