Re: [Networker] New server setup - VTL and LTO3 tape library for staging - best practices
2007-03-27 15:49:15
I've seen the reply from Mark Davis, but I have not seen any others.
Does anyone else have input on this?
Brian O'Neill wrote:
OK, I'm about to embark on setting up a new Legato server to replace our
venerable Sun 450 with P3000 library. It is my first adventure with a
VTL, and using staging/cloning to any great extent.
I've read many posts regarding setting up VTLs, etc., and I just want to
gather all of it and see if I've got it straight, and pose a few extra
questions while I wait for the hardware vendor to plug it all in.
For the hardware, the server is a Dell 1950 dual-core with FC and
Ultra/320 SCSI PCIe boards and hardware-mirrored 300GB SAS drives.
The VTL is a Quantum DX3000 connected via FC - I forget the total
capacity we ordered offhand.
The tape library is a Quantum PX502 with two LTO3 tape drives with SCSI
connection. This will be used for staging to tape for offsite storage.
I plan to continue using Networker 7.2.2, although there are no plans to
migrate the current saveset info - we'll start fresh.
==== VTL configuration
I understand people have been recommending configuring as many virtual
tape drives as you can, and setting the parallelism for each to 1. Our
current license (Network Edition) limits us to 16 devices, so that is
our upper limit, which I don't think is a problem for us (I stagger
backups).
Should I also set server parallelism to 16? I understand that regardless
of device parallelism, it will add more sessions to drives if the server
parallelism is set higher than the total.
I know this was to avoid multiplexing - but was this relevant to the VTL
performance, restores, or was it more for staging later?
What advantages/disadvantages are there to choosing P1000 vs. P7000 vs.
DX3000 emulation? Is the DX3000 as "supported" type in 7.2.2?
What about DLT7000 vs. LTO-2 for the virtual tape drives? DLT happens to
be what we use now, but that should have no relevance here.
What is the purpose of defining empty bins? Is this just for virtual
migration of cartridges?
==== Staging
I've done some D2D2T staging before, but only on a small scale. Given
that I have LTO-3 drives, I know keeping write performance up is a
consideration, and I don't need to use both drives at once - we got two
more for redundancy.
We plan to keep our current schedule of moving tapes with the backups
offsite on a weekly basis, so I would need to stage all (except perhaps
the most recent) savesets to tape prior to removal.
I've used nsrstage manually, which "deletes" the old saveset, and I am
aware of the automatic staging which stages based on age and/or space
(although that may only apply to file/adv_file types?)
Ideally, I'd like to keep as much on the VTL as possible (for restore
purposes), and still stage everything to tape for the weekly tape pull.
We could do the staging once a week, or as needed - it doesn't matter.
How best to set this up? I assume we'll have to set up cloning in some
fashion - but how to we "expire" the originals on the VTL faster?
I think that's it for now.
-Brian
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