[BBLISA] backups

[Ryan Pugatch]

On 12/14/2010 04:31 PM, John Stoffel wrote:

> Do you have money to spend?  How much data?
>

Yes, we have money to spend toward a solution.  We're talking about 65T 
of data.  25T are archived logs and photos (so there is no change, just 
additions)

> Ryan>  getting offsite via 100Mbit or 1GigE
>
> Yeah, you have money.  :]  Though I bet you're not going too far
> offsite with your setup at those prices.

Going to VA from MA.

> I personally still like Legato/EMC networker, but I haven't used it
> for years.  The CLI tools are very well done so you can easily script
> up reports or do stuff by hand.  And the browsing for restores is
> excellent, best I've ever used out of:  Veritas NetBackup 5.x, Legato
> Networker 4.x&  5.x, Bacula, Commvault 7.x and 8.x.
>
> The big thing to remember is that no one cares about backups, they
> only care about restores.  So a tool which makes restores easy and
> painless is the best.

True that!

>
> Also, if you are using Netapp storage, it might be worth it to
> snapmirror across your WAN link and then backup to disk remotely.  Not
> cheap I admit, but certainly lets you keep your DR and restore options
> lightning fast.

Hoping to avoid expensive storage.. I'd love to use cheap Dell arrays.

>
> CommVault will do the D2D2D without a problem, but I'm not really
> enamored of how they do things.  They have this Java client to do any
> and all changes and it's just not nice at times.  They have an
> interesting mindset (and they've been around for ages and ages, spun
> off from AT&T) and it does work.  It's just... painful to wrap you
> head around.

CommVault is currently my top option.  They do dedupe, replication and I 
can put it all on cheap arrays.  It is pretty expensive though.
>
> Bacula is open source and fairly easy to setup, but... the restore
> process is out of the 80s, and just not friendly.  You can buy
> professional support, and maybe they have better tools on that side of
> things.  I do use it at home, and it has saved my bacon, but it's not
> what I think it should be.
>
> Amanda.  Haven't used it for years and years.  It might now be called
> zmanad or something.  You might want ot check it out.

We're currently using Zmanda/Amanda but it has been horrible as we've grown.
>
> Veritas Netbackup.  I didn't like it when I used it, but I can't say I
> used it in anger at all.  And it was over six years ago, so god knows
> what's changed.

You mean Symantec NetBackup now ;)
>
> Are you looking for backup a single large system?  A bunch of smaller
> stuff?  Money to burn?  Willingness to go opensource?

Whatever works, basically.  We run lots of open source stuff, so that's 
not a problem.  That said, Amanda has been pretty rough for us.  We're 
definitely looking for truly enterprise grade backups.  Also, our teams 
run pretty small so it isn't like we have time to fight to make the 
backups work all of the time.