Best Backup Methods for an Backup to NAS ?

[WinstonWolf]

Hello ,

I have one ESX Host , an HP DL380 Gen8 with 64GB ram and an RAID 5 and also an RAID10 on which 8 Virtual Servers running ( 6 x W2008 R2 ( DC, DATA, EXCHANGE 2010 and 3 DATABASE SERVERS ) , 1 x W2008 and 2 x W2K3 Server ) , Network 2 x Gbit LAN for Management Network and 2 Gbit LAN for VM Machines Network .

My Backup Proxy is an IBM RD 220 with 12 GB RAM and an Intel Xeon Quad core . There is an Network Team with 2 x Gbit Network Cards. The Backup Target is an Windows Share on an Deluxe NAS System which has also an Network Team .

What is the best Backup Method for this Environment when i plan to have a five Day ( Monday till Friday ) Backup from this Servers and an "Sunday" backup on Weekends which should run on every of the 4 Sundays of a Month .

How many Backup Repositorys should i create ? How many Backup Jobs should i create ? One for all ? One only for the new W2008 R2 Servers ?

Thanks for Help and recommendations

Michael

[veremin]

How many Backup Jobs should I create? One for all? One only for the new W2008 R2 Servers?

The job creation is completely up to you. Though, typically it's recommended to include VMs with same OS within one job for better deduplication rates. Your environment doesn't seem to be that big, so, you can, probably, stick to one for all scenario.

How many Backup Repositorys should i create ?

We recommend using more than one backup repository in order to protect backup data from accidental disaster. See this blog post describing ultimate backup infrastructure for more details.

Thanks.

[WinstonWolf]

Thanks for the fast answer . That means i put all my W2008 R2 Server in one Job because they have all the same Operating System . I plan to use a Monday till Tuesday "Reverse Incremental" Backup with 5 Recovery Points . Is it the right BAckup Method for this Environment ?

[veremin]

It depends on what you're after. Forward incremental mode provides increased backup performance because of the 3x less I/O operations on the target storage. Though, with this mode you will have to run full backups on more frequent basis.

Meanwhile, reversed incremental mode provides better storage savings on the cost of lesser speeds.

Thanks.

[WinstonWolf]

What means "better storage Savings" . Or is it better when i choose inkremental Backups and on Saturday the inkremental Full ?

[foggy]

Here's an old but still good comparison of both backup modes. Basically, with reversed incremental you always have a single full backup file stored on disk, while all the other restore points are incrementals (i.e. much smaller in size). Forward incremental mode requires more space due to the number of fulls stored on disk at any given moment in time. I also recommend to review the corresponding user guide sections for pretty good backup modes description.