Using the X4500 as a Backup Disk-Cache
I've published two papers to BigAdmin on how to use the Sun Fire X4500 as a large disk cache for disk-based backups with Symantec Netbackup and Sun's own Sun StorageTek Enterprise Backup Software.
Sun Fire X4500 Server as Storage Node for Sun StorageTek Enterprise Backup Softwware 7.4
Sun Fire X4500 as a Media Server for Symantec Veritas Netbackup 6.5
Both papers discuss using the X4500 running Solaris10 and the ZFS Filesystem to present a large (10-15TB) amount of disk-cache for fast backups and restores.
Check them out. Your feedback is welcome on the BigAdmin Wiki discussion pages.
Sun Fire X4500 Server as Storage Node for Sun StorageTek Enterprise Backup Softwware 7.4
Sun Fire X4500 as a Media Server for Symantec Veritas Netbackup 6.5
Both papers discuss using the X4500 running Solaris10 and the ZFS Filesystem to present a large (10-15TB) amount of disk-cache for fast backups and restores.
Check them out. Your feedback is welcome on the BigAdmin Wiki discussion pages.
Nice, Ryan.
This is exactly what Sun needs to do - publish true recipes on practical integrations that solve real customer problems. Keep them coming.
Posted by Pete on May 16, 2008 at 10:01 PM MDT #
Welcome back to blog world :-)
Posted by Tim Thomas on May 17, 2008 at 11:49 AM MDT #
Great stuff. My question: Why so many spare disks? It seems like two or three would be plenty, unless the system is remote and unattended for lengthy periods of time.
Posted by zfs user on May 17, 2008 at 10:39 PM MDT #
Regarding EBS/Networker:
It is a good idea to use seperate AFTDs for each backup with same retention policy. This also means you have to create a zfs-filesystem for each of them. If you don't consider the retention policy it might happen that your disks get full in short time. Also it would be good to setup a staging policy by default. That prevents from problems when free space gets to its end. You can also use different staging policies for the AFTDs to keep some data longer on disk.
Posted by Otmanix on May 17, 2008 at 10:59 PM MDT #
Hi zfs_user,
The ZPOOL layout was more for aesthetic purposes than anything else. I just liked the symmetry of 8x5disk vdevs and 6 hotspares (one from each controller). You could easily create another vdev and go RAIDZ2 and get increased RAS that way, the performance is comparable. In some of my MIRROR config testing I used 22 mirrored pairs with 2 spares.
Otmanix,
Very good suggestions.
Posted by RyanArneson on May 18, 2008 at 09:52 AM MDT #
I thought this was an awesome write-up and I mentioned it on the NetBackup blog. https://forums.symantec.com/syment/blog/article?message.uid=319141
Thanks for writing it up.
Posted by tim burlowski on May 20, 2008 at 07:13 AM MDT #