Ryann,

If your not using DDBoost devices then the number and size will depend upon your particular environment needs. Each AFTD device would belong to a pool and therefore depending on how many pools you want to use will determine how many AFTD's you define. Customers vary on how the divide data up - some do it by retention, others by OS (say Windows and Unix), some System and Application (like all OS backups and then Oracle, Exchange separate or together).

AFTD's are usually larger in size but the main disadvantage is filling the device, as this stops any further backups being taken to it until free space is available (via manual or automatic operations). Space could be freed by staging, saveset expiry or saveset deletion (which is not advised as NetWorker should maintain all data on retention).

There is some advice given in the NetWorker Administration Guides in the Device Operations section under File and AFTD.

Hope this helps

Regards,

Bill Mason

Ok that makes sense... but maybe I'm not understanding this completly:  If the datadomain only has 1 large partition will the 2 devices eventually be combating each other for space in the long run?

Is there a way to limit the size of a adv_file device? 

Hi,

You can set the watermark (low and high) to monitor the device utilization.

NetWorker software should stop writing to an AFTD spans from 1 to 100%. Setting the value to 0 or leaving the attribute empty in the AFTD Percentage Capacity attribute is equivalent to a setting of 100%. This means that the entire capacity of the filesystem can be used for the AFTD volume.

When set, the AFTD Percentage Capacity attribute is used to declare the volume full and to calculate high/low watermarks. When the percentage capacity attribute is modified, mount and re-mount the volume for the new settings to take effect.

The level watermark is calculated based on the percentage of restricted capacity, not on the full capacity of the filesystem.

In the Console

Configuration tab of the Properties window of a device when Diagnostic Mode is enabled. To enable Diagnostic Mode, select  View > Diagnostic Mode