Questions about implementing disk-to-disk backup

[cmcfarling]

I've been using Retrospect for years. Currently running Multi Server v6 to a VXA2 tape library. I'm considering revamping the whole daily backup architecture and wanted to run my thoughts by this forum.

 

The new plan would include the following sources:

- Multiple Win2K/2K3 servers with a total of about 1.5TB

- One (eventualy more) OS X servers with a total of about 1.5TB

- Multiple desktops/laptops with a total of about 50-100GB

 

I'm looking to run MultiServer 7.5 on a Win2K machine with a direct-attached RAID for the disk backup. Host-to-enclosure would be SCSI U320 and the drives would be SATAII, 750GB probably (the RAID could be as big as 7.5TB). I'd incorporate the grooming feature of Retrospect. The idea is to make this a reliable, fast, daily backup solution while requiring as little admin intervention as possible. Currently the weekly full backup takes about 3 days, not to mention the amount of time Retrospect regularly waits for someone to give it a new tape.

 

Can Retrospect handle this setup reliably? What would be a good amount of RAM for the Retrospect server? For the disk backup RAID, what's a good partitioning scheme; one giant partition or several smaller ones?

 

Another thought I had was to setup a dedicated LAN that would be used just for transfering backup data. Each server that gets backed up has dual Gb ethernet ports. I could use the (currently unused) 2nd NIC in each server to attach to a dedicated Gigabit switch. Is anyone doing this currently? Could Retrospect be configured to use specific NICs anyway?

 

Thanks for any feedback

Chris