NAS backup to tape or use the agent

[lowlander]

Hi there,

I was thinking about protecting shares on Windows servers. With V10 we can use NAS Backup Support.

I was thinking to use the NAS Backup Support feature for the short term retention requirements. Unfortunately object storage is not allowed for this use case, so I was wondering if we can backup the "share" based on the agent and then do a back-up to tape directly / or should we first stage it to a local backup repository ?

For sure I am now thinking back-up to tape for NAS Backup Support is a reasonable feature request.

[Gostev]

Well, NAS backup is a D2D backup solution. It may support hot object storage as a target in later versions as well. But if you want your files backed up to tape, what about using File to Tape job? Thanks!

[lowlander]

Yeah, file to tape is an option, however the standard SQLxpress database is going to explode Maybe we need to consider the agent style backup...

[Gostev]

Agree, it's not a good choice for large amount of files... it was designed for copying backups to tape. We have some ideas how to make it scale though, and it will be much easier than turning our NAS backup into D2D2T. Although the latter is also an option, if it's OK if the data going to tape will be dumped in a native format (vs. current distributed database format, which was purpose-built for disk storage).

[Samba222]

"... and it will be much easier than turning our NAS backup into D2D2T" - but the customers don't want the easy way, they want the enterprise solution and this is indeed NAS backup D2D2T. Please dont tinkering on File2Tape because it's "easy" (or easier) - this is, maybe was, not Veeam Style. For our hosting environemt and customers it's the last chance to bring NAS Backup on the right way, otherwise we have to switch to other solutions and this is not only a technical decision. my2¢

[Gostev]

Well, if we're talking "enterprise solution", then every single such customer I met wants to be able to perform file recovery directly from tape. Doing D2D2T means offloading chunks of our distributed database to tape, with the only recovery option being moving all this data back to disk first, before the recovery can be performed - as obviously, you can't run a database from tape. So not only you will need to find enough free disk space to stage back potentially 100TB to 1PB of distributed database, but also a few days of time just based on the hardware throughput. This does not really make it an "enterprise solution", does it?

Now, if we did File2Tape from our NAS backup instead, then I don't really see any drawbacks whatsoever - so I'm curious why you think this is a bad approach?

[Samba222]

of course not the chunks ... but rather turning NAS backup into D2D2T and not a blown up F2T which is'nt corresponding with the same DB of NAS Backup (Index, Search etc.) ... that was the intended wish

[Gostev]

Got it, thanks for the follow-up.

Consolidated results from both databases is not a problem of course, we can make it totally seamless.