samba and NT backups

[Jason Berendsen_1]

I have installed Samba on our N class backup server. The disk shares are from an EMC 3930. These shares will be used to do a temporary backup of several NT servers. From here the disk shares will be backed up to tape via Omniback and the disk shares will be available for restores until the next backup. Unfortunately because we are doing this across a 100mb network it takes a long time for these copies. Can anyone make any recommendations as to a quicker way to do this with the minimal hardware and software cost.

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

You are doing this the slow and hard way. Simply install OB2 disk agents on your NT boxes and back them up to your UNIX media agent. As long as your are running OB2 3.x and above no additional licenses are required. OB2 is far more efficient than any networked filesystem in pushing data across the network. If you need to keep the shares in place for some reason, fine. You already should have the NT media for your OmniBack but I would download the latest NT patches. This will perform probably 2x as well as doing a network filesystem backup.

Regards, Clay

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Jason,

I would definitely consider a dedicated backup subnetwork to isolate the backup traffic from "standard" net traffic.
Costs would only be extra NICS, appropriate network devices (hubs, routers, etc.) and network media.
Could be relatively "painless" if the number of servers to be backed up is low.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Jason Berendsen_1]

Clay,

I thought you needed to purchase NT OB2 licenses. Are you saying that since we are running OB2 3.10 that we wouldn't need to purchase an NT agent license?

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi Jason:

That is exactly what I am saying. At OB2 2.55 and below the licensing was a function of the number of actively spinning tape drives (media agents) and attached clients. Starting at OB2 3.0, the licensing is only dependent upon the number of ACTIVE tape drives. There is a wrinkle in that a UNIX tape drive is not considered an NT tape drive so that if you want to back up to NT tape drives you will need a license for each one. If you simply want to backup from any number of NT boxes to tape drives on your existing UNIX boxes, you are all set. Install the disk agent and core package from your CD to each NT box. I would then download and install the latest NT patch (it looks just like another install). You need to make sure that each NT box can address the Cell Server and any other UNIX boxes that have the attached media agents by hostname and that the reverse is true as well. You then go to your Cell Server and Import each NT host and you are ready.