A couple years ago we decided to replace dozens and dozens of big Windows servers with a centralize Isilon NAS. The Windows servers, being tons of little files, were an ongoing pain to backup with TSM. Our decision was to NOT backup the Isilon to TSM or any other external program. Instead, we decided to use snapshots and replication to a DR Isilon. In other words, we made a conscience decision to stop using TSM to backup this data when we moved to Isilon. We took the opportunity to standardize backup policies to a single snapshot retention of just 32 days to help keep the snapshot disk space down. Other than watching free disk space and a periodic check of replication and snapshots, backup of this data is out of sight and out of mind.
Rick -----Original Message----- From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager <ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU> On Behalf Of Zoltan Forray Sent: Thursday, July 5, 2018 2:52 PM To: ADSM-L@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: [EXTERNAL] Looking for suggestions to deal with large backups not completing in 24-hours As I have mentioned in the past, we have gone through large migrations to DFS based storage on EMC ISILON hardware. As you may recall, we backup these DFS mounts (about 90 at last count) using multiple Windows servers that run multiple ISP nodes (about 30-each) and they access each DFS mount/filesystem via -object=\\rams.adp.vcu.edu\departmentname. This has lead to lots of performance issue with backups and some departments are now complain that their backups are running into multiple-days in some cases. One such case in a department with 2-nodes with over 30-million objects for each node. In the past, their backups were able to finish quicker since they were accessed via dedicated servers and were able to use Journaling to reduce the scan times. Unless things have changed, I believe Journling is not an option due to how the files are accessed. FWIW, average backups are usually <50k files and <200GB once it finished scanning..... Also, the idea of HSM/SPACEMANAGEMENT has reared its ugly head since many of these objects haven't been accessed in many years old. But as I understand it, that won't work either given our current configuration. Given the current DFS configuration (previously CIFS), what can we do to improve backup performance? So, any-and-all ideas are up for discussion. There is even discussion on replacing ISP/TSM due to these issues/limitations. -- *Zoltan Forray* Spectrum Protect (p.k.a. TSM) Software & Hardware Administrator Xymon Monitor Administrator VMware Administrator Virginia Commonwealth University UCC/Office of Technology Services www.ucc.vcu.edu zfor...@vcu.edu - 804-828-4807 Don't be a phishing victim - VCU and other reputable organizations will never use email to request that you reply with your password, social security number or confidential personal information. For more details visit http://phishing.vcu.edu/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The information contained in this message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the recipient(s) named above. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this document in error and that any review, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately, and delete the original message.
