1bdb4f25-865c-49fd-9b71-d85f702209ac Posted July 7, 2011 Report Share Posted July 7, 2011 Hi - Tech support has been less than helpful, so i thought i'd ask my questions here: 1) My setup requires that i store the catalog files on the backup disks (if you want to know why ask). I don't care to know why this is a bad idea, as tech support keeps telling me, i just want to know how to configure the backups to look for the catalog files in a non-default location. 2) If I'd known this before buying, I wouldn't have: according to tech support, each simultaneous backup session requires 15G (!!!) of space on the system volume. The person who set up my servers made the system volumes of minimal size (12 - 40 G) and needless to say they're getting full, and i'd like to not have to set up yet another machine solely for running as backup server(we're 14 people in the company, and so far have 5 servers doing various things). Can these 15G requirements be directed to another disk attached to the server? Again - I don't care why it's a bad idea, i just need to now if i can do it. Many thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richy_Boy Posted July 8, 2011 Report Share Posted July 8, 2011 (edited) You can just stop the RS Server, move the catlog file and then start it up again. When you access a backup set it'll ask for the location of the catalog files I think. I agree with Support though, building catalog files is a disk-intensive task which if you keep your backup sets on a NAS box (for example) will kill performance. Depending on what physical server you have, a better option would be to either slot in more disks just for calalogs or even hang off an external ESATA or USB2/3 drive. Also, for you info - if you have a backup set and no catalogs at all (i.e. a corrupt disk/failure) when you rebuild the catalog the RS Server asks you where you want to save them - which can be local disks or network storage. HOpe that helps? Rich Edited July 8, 2011 by Richy_Boy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1bdb4f25-865c-49fd-9b71-d85f702209ac Posted July 8, 2011 Author Report Share Posted July 8, 2011 You can just stop the RS Server, move the catlog file and then start it up again. When you access a backup set it'll ask for the location of the catalog files I think. I agree with Support though, building catalog files is a disk-intensive task which if you keep your backup sets on a NAS box (for example) will kill performance. Depending on what physical server you have, a better option would be to either slot in more disks just for calalogs or even hang off an external ESATA or USB2/3 drive. Rich Thanks. Here's why i want them on the NAS: 2 NAS units Week 1: backup to NAS1 Week 2: Take NAS1 offsite, backup to NAS2 What gets backed up week 2? Case 1: Catalogs on server - only files changed since Week 1 get backed up to NAS2 (NOT the goal - want another full backup) Case 2: Catalog on NAS: all files since this particular NAS was used get backed up. the goal is to rotate NAS units, keeping one offsite. That way, if there's a catastrophic failure, I'll have a complete backup at most one week old stored offsite. If the catalogs are on the server I will never get a complete backup after Week 1. NAS1 will get out of sync with what's on NAS2, and NAS2 will never have gotten a full in the first place. How to implement with the catalogs on the server??? Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richy_Boy Posted July 8, 2011 Report Share Posted July 8, 2011 (edited) I think you're looking at this wrong. If you run two NAS boxes and rotate, you ideally want two backups sets (one per week) and schedule/script them to run alternatley. i.e. Script1 > BackupSet1 = week 1 = NAS1... Script2 > BackupSet2 = week 2 = NAS2. Script1 > BackupSet1 = week 3 = NAS1 Script2 > BackupSet2 = week 4 = NAS2. That way, each will have their own catalog file so nothing will get out of sync. Personally, I have my catalogs on a SSD disk in my server (for brute speed) and only take the backup sets offsite via External USB disks. In a DR scenareo, a few ours rebuilding the catalogs is more than acceptable. I backup to a NAS box, like you, but use the build-in rsync copying process to duplicate the changes to all my backup sets to external USB disks (which are taken offsite and rotated). Anyway, if you're rotating NAS devices on a weekly basis, you need a backup set for each week/NAS. Hope that helps, Rich Edited July 8, 2011 by Richy_Boy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1bdb4f25-865c-49fd-9b71-d85f702209ac Posted July 8, 2011 Author Report Share Posted July 8, 2011 I think you're looking at this wrong. If you run two NAS boxes and rotate, you ideally want two backups sets (one per week) and schedule them to run alternatley. i.e. BackupSet1 = week 1 = NAS1... BackupSet2 = week 2 = NAS 2. Week three = BackupSet1 and Week 4 = BackupSet2. That way, each will have their own catalog file so nothing will get out of sync. It's way more important to get the backup set than the catalog files as the latter can easily be rebuilt from the backup set. Depending on how many disks you NAS device has, maybe run two arrays. i.e. on a 6 disk NAS, run 1x 2-disk RAID1 array and 1x 4-disk RAID5. That way, the backup sets and catalog files will not be on the same spindles, so will not choke the system up. Personally, I have my catalogs on a SSD disk in my server (for brute speed) and only take the backup sets offsite via External USB disks. In a DR scenareo, a few ours rebuilding the catalogs is more than acceptable. I backup to a NAS box, like you, but use the build-in rsync copying process to duplicate the changes to the backup set to external USB disks (which are taken offsite and rotated). Anyway, if you're rotating NAS devices on a weekly basis, you need a backup set for each week. Hope that helps, Rich Ah - your first paragraph is the answer I've been looking for, I think. The only problem i can see is if the NAS units don't get swapped for some reason, but that may not be a problem with this method. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richy_Boy Posted July 8, 2011 Report Share Posted July 8, 2011 No problem.. I've edited my post to make it clearer.. If they don't get swapped, then expected BackupSet'x' will not be available, so the backups will not take place. So you could set BOTH week scripts to run every week and set the script to timeout after a hour if it can't find the NAS box online. So, in the scenareo of a NAS device not being swapped, whatever NAS box is available will be backed up to. Hope that makes sense...? Make sure you set the script to time out after a set time though, otherwise the scripts will be queued up and it'll be mayhem when it finally becomes available! Rich Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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