We have had the same problem a few times with a twist.
We use staging and cloning. But during backups the staging does copy data to
the tapes but the disk is not purged fast enough to free up the space so
backups continue.
One of the main design flaws was that some servers have so much data on it
that in case of high watermark it is already too late to unload.

We now have the following design .
If you want to keep 2 days of data on a buffer AND use staging, than the
buffer needs to be at least 50 % bigger so it should hold at least 3 days of
data. Second part is reconfigure the groups so the large clients are spread
out over the entire backup-window. Thirdly all clients that predictably
exceed the limits put them in a group that backs up to tape in stead of
buffer.
Our next problem was/is that we have 1450 clients in one backup-server with
3 main sites.
We are now splitting up the one environment into multiple backup-zones that
are no larger than 750 clients per backup server and spread over at least 2
storagenodes per zone. This also reduces the load on the buffers
significantly.

Lastly changing to networker 7.4.2, Gbit network and bundle nics into 4 Gbit
speed on storage node, makes the window larger and the backups faster so
there is more time to do housekeeping on the buffers.
---
Basically the answer to your question is yes you can overvome the problem
but a t a cost beit time and work or money and more hardware. Nevertheless
it is worth exploring all the options. We did and we are quite happy now.

-----Original Message-----
From: EMC NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU] On
Behalf Of Ben Deng
Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2008 12:22 PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: [Networker] Backup to Adv-file device

Hi everyone and Happy new year,

 

I've a frustrating problem with backup to Adv-file devices, I've 5
Adv-file device volumes with approximately 6TB in each. Every night the
backup groups will start and make backup to these volumes, but when a
volumes is full, the backup group will not switch to the next free
volume, it just hang there until I manually free some spaces. It there a
way to configure Adv-file devices to overcome this problem or is it a
Networker design flaw.

 

Regards,

Ben Deng

 

 

 


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