Backup solution for freeBSD/Symantec Backup exec porting

[markham breitbach]

On 2014-12-03 5:01 PM, Ian Lord wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've been using freebsd since version 4.11 and always dealt with backup semi manually with dump, copying files over, database dumps, etc.
>
> By the way, not as a home user, but for 8-10 servers used in a SAAS application. We are looking for something more serious as we are dealing with about 10TB of data for documents, and 600-800 gigs of SQL database. Everything is redundant, replicated, etc, but we need a serious backup solution.
>
> We are thinking of purchasing a DELL Powervault LT2000 device which consists of 1 or 2 LTO6 tape drives with 24 slots giving 60TB of data space for retention
>
> I've read a lot on the subject and many people seem to do dumps on a remote HD, etc, but to get to 60TB of disk space would cost a lot and would be less reliable then a tape library in my opinion.
I guess it depends a little bit on your application, but I am assuming
you are looking for something to do daily backups.

Speaking from some rather miserable personal experiences, I would
strongly recommend not using tapes for backup.  Pretty much every tape
backup system I have used has been unable to restore any/all of the
files required when I needed them.  They always worked great in all the
tests, but when it came down to an actual failure the tapes were useless.

When you are looking at costs, don't forget to factor in the cost of
replacing ALL the tapes every 30 or 60 days.  That's probably about
$500-$1000/month.  A reasonable life expectancy for most HDDs is about 3
years, and usually you can push them to 5, so just the cost of tapes
over a 3 year span will buy you over 500TB of storage up front. 
Backblaze and Google have some interesting reports on drive lifespan as
well (LMGTFY...)
>
> We need something automated and reliable. Hopefully, with a nice gui to restore individual files etc...
>
> We already have backup exec 2014 for our windows servers, but they don't make an agent for freebsd.
> Symantec has netbackup which supports FreeBSD, but it seems really expensive (A rep will call me, tells all about the price lol)
>
> I've read on Bacula and Amanda, and it really doesn't feel like a product mature enough (outdated documentation, no clear indication the tape library would work, etc). Their commercial counterparts are really expensives... I'm afraid to purchase hardware, new server, etc and end up with nothing working.
The great thing about running something like Bacula or Amanda on FreeBSD
is that it will run on just about anything (even that old 486 propping
open the server room door, really!)  Install it, and try it out.  See if
it meets your needs on a small subset of your data.  It will take some
time, but if it works, you save your company a pile of money and look
like a star, and if not then you can also say you have looked at all the
available options and you look like a star!  :)

We have developed an in-house system that works very similar to Bacula
and Amanda:  basically rsync and rotating hardlinks, that allow us to
store incremental backups that look like full backup sets, and since
usually less then 5% of the data changes on a daily basis (YMMV) we can
keep a lot of them on one disk system, and do things like
weekly/monthly/yearly snapshots. 

The key to using this is developing a restore procedure BEFORE you need
it and documenting it thoroughly, so when you actually need it 12 months
later, you can follow the procedure quickly and easily (or the new guy
can).  It never hurts to find some time to do DR drills as well.  Set
aside a Friday and do a test restore to a spare system.
>
> In the past, we used backup exec to backup freebsd using their legacy backup agents in linux compat mode and it was working really well. We tried (without extensive effort) to make work their linux agent on freebsd without success.
>
> So my questions are:
>
> 1-      Does anyone have a tape library working with bacula or Amanda ? Does it work well ? (meaning stable, reliable and good performance)
>
> 2-      Would anyone be willing to try to make backup exec work on freebsd using linux compat mode ? I would be willing to finance the project up to 500$ perhaps other people reading this could also contribute to have more man hours on this task.
>
> I love so much FreeBSD Over Linux, but it's always hard to get support from vendors... We are even evaluating to switch our fileservers to Centos (where we also dump sql databases and could replicate important data from freeBSD) to be able to easily back them up using Backup Exec's agent. But this would be my last resort as I don't want to support linux box where everything else in in FreeBSD.
>
> Any help/comment would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Ian Lord
> MSD Informatique
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