How to setup simultaneous multiple backups for Windows host ?
How to setup simultaneous multiple backups for Windows host ?
We have a host with 10 file systems each with around 150 GB backup data (total around 1.3 TB). The backup takes around 36-38 hours. As such, I was looking at splitting the backup to 3 simultaneous streams so that it can complete in 12 hours or so. Is there any way to do this ? I know there are other options (such as not to backup all drives on daily basis, but am currently not looking at that option). Reason for taking so long time for backup is that there are many changes happening on the server applications and the directory structure is too deep. Server team is looking at that but it will take long time. So, was looking at running 3 simultaneous streams on same host.
You can create multiple instances of the Client and run multiple backups. Only problem with that approach is that you cannot run 2 backups from the same client at a time. You can try to increase the no. of sessions in more options and see if that helps.
separate windows drives/mount points ? Yes, there is a way to setup and run backups on multiple drives at the same time. Talk to support and they will give you the procedure. I had a Windows 2k8 R2 cluster with 8 drives, each drive was 10TB so you can imagine running one backup would not cut it. Support gave me the procedure that allowed me to run 8 backup simultaneously. You do have to be careful with CPU/Memory/Disk I/O utilization when you do that. Mine was running on pretty beefy Cisco UCS blade so it was fine.
I checked with EMC Support and was told that it's not possible on Windows systems. Hence, posted the query on community. Can you send me the steps to make this happen ?
i am not sure you are talking to the right people or they understand what you are trying to do. Level 2 support had the procedure. The procedure basically involves setting up multiple avamar services running on the same Windows host, each service will be using a different port, appear as different avamar client and require special dataset for each drive letter you want to backup.
Slow backup performance is most often caused by some factor other than lack of parallelism. Implementing and managing parallelism has a number of caveats and challenges, especially for methods like running multiple avtars in parallel. The reason people are insisting you work with support is that support can help you analyze your environment and determine if there is some other factor that needs to be addressed before opening the parallelism can of worms. There are also several different ways to implement parallelism and if parallelism is actually needed, they can point you toward the appropriate type to use.
Shooting in the dark is not going to help you. Please work with support on this. You will likely need to work with L2 support.
FYI, setting --parallel for Data Domain integrated backups is known to cause issues and is not supported.
None of the reply has been helpful as yet. I have tried my options with EMC support but they have refused stating this is not possible. Does anyone want to provide me the answer ?
gautamgp
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Posted May 5th, 2016 22:00
You can create multiple instances of the Client and run multiple backups. Only problem with that approach is that you cannot run 2 backups from the same client at a time. You can try to increase the no. of sessions in more options and see if that helps.