Re: EMC Celerra fileserver (NAS) with a Symmetrix (Fibre-SAN) backend
Hi Kent, we have a Celerra file server for our NT LAN and it works wonderfully. We replaced 11 OS2 servers and have 4000 users, 500gb of storage that we migrated to NT4 on the Celerra(so it was a double conversion). The failover works as advertised, just make sure you have failsafe networking enabled. It has solved many issues of the NT environment such as mapping the users, servers failing, maintenance issues etc. But most of all it is reliable and service interruptions are no longer attributed to the servers as we have had no Celerra failures since the first week and those two were an initial parm issue and human error. We also wanted quotas at the directory level and that is now coming. Support has been splendid. While there are many third party software products that do not work with NAS in general our major drawback is with TSM, NDMP is not supported for Celerra that I know of. We have had a couple of instances where directories show up and that usually means we have to run the Celerra cleanup utilities and sometime add space as we have gone over the limit of 85% allocated this has caused TSM to loop.We also have seen TSM suddenly go into full backup mode for no reason, it seems this may occur if the service is knocked down or the client loses communication with the server during the backup. Also, TSM journalling is not supported for network attached drives and we were depending on this to speed up the backup of 3million files. We have now broken the file systems down into multiple nodes and are using a 4.2 client with a 4.1 Server on OS390, but we need to break it down into more nodes to get still better backup times, but it now seems to be stable, EMC tells us that the TSM issues except NDMP are fixed. We are not prepared at this time to change our infrastructure and backup to an AIX box with fibre tape. Celerra has new backup capablity such as SNAPSURE and Concurrent Backup that you could investigate. Also there is COMMVAULT from Galaxy software that is integrated with Celerra, and there is also EMC's TIMEFINDER which will give you a tactical mirror for restore and a copy to backup from. EMC's SRDF for remote copy is of course the defacto DR product when you have a SYMM. You have a large implementation and I would be interested in what you find works as your backup/recovery solution. Regards...Norma __ The information in this e-mail is intended solely for the addressee(s) named, and is confidential. Any other distribution, disclosure or copying is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please reply by e-mail to the sender and delete or destroy all copies of this message. Les renseignements contenus dans le présent message électronique sont confidentiels et concernent exclusivement le(s) destinataire(s) désigné(s). Il est strictement interdit de distribuer ou de copier ce message. Si vous avez reçu ce message par erreur, veuillez répondre par courriel à l'expéditeur et effacer ou détruire toutes les copies du présent message.
Re: EMC Celerra fileserver (NAS) with a Symmetrix (Fibre-SAN) backend
Kent, being NAS does this device allow you any interface other than NDMP for backup? I guess no. So you are stuck to Full/Differential backup ideology provided by NDMP if you want to backup without data transfers over the LAN. The drawback - you lose all of TSM benefits and the protection level is not good enough for such large ammount of data. Other option is data move over LAN - mount the filesystems to a client and perform backups from there. One transfer over the LAN to read files (MgSysSAN client or client on the TSM server box) and second transfer if MgSysLAN is used to send file to TSM server. Even with big network load you will have incremental-forever, restore down to a single file, copypools, etc. Look for details in TSM for Windows Using the B/A Client, Appendix A: Backing up NAS. Zlatko Krastev IT Consultant Please respond to ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by:ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: Subject:EMC Celerra fileserver (NAS) with a Symmetrix (Fibre-SAN) backend We'll soon have an EMC Celerra 8530, Connectrix fibre switch and Symmetrix fibre-SAN in our NT environment. This 'super-fileserver' is projected to replace several hundred existing legacy NT fileservers. The purchase has been made. Deployment is projected approx 2 months out and phased ports of legacy server filesystems will commence shortly after that - but the backup strategy and solution for it is still being spec'd. The basic building blocks of the Symmetrix SAN will be 181GB disks (3-4 TB of them initially). The Celerra will have 10 Data-Movers initially. EMC was recently on-site to present all the good news about the Celerra. For backups and DR issues specifically, I'd also like to hear the people's side of the story: - Who out there is backing up one of these, and how? - How well does your backup solution work (for backups, also for restores) ? - How reliable is EMC hardware, service tech support ? Have you experienced any downtime attributable to EMC hardware failures, service or tech-support problems? - Are there any configuration or backup strategy pitfalls that we must avoid to ensure successful daily backups? -rsvp, thanks Kent Monthei GlaxoSmithKline
EMC Celerra fileserver (NAS) with a Symmetrix (Fibre-SAN) backend
We'll soon have an EMC Celerra 8530, Connectrix fibre switch and Symmetrix fibre-SAN in our NT environment. This 'super-fileserver' is projected to replace several hundred existing legacy NT fileservers. The purchase has been made. Deployment is projected approx 2 months out and phased ports of legacy server filesystems will commence shortly after that - but the backup strategy and solution for it is still being spec'd. The basic building blocks of the Symmetrix SAN will be 181GB disks (3-4 TB of them initially). The Celerra will have 10 Data-Movers initially. EMC was recently on-site to present all the good news about the Celerra. For backups and DR issues specifically, I'd also like to hear the people's side of the story: - Who out there is backing up one of these, and how? - How well does your backup solution work (for backups, also for restores) ? - How reliable is EMC hardware, service tech support ? Have you experienced any downtime attributable to EMC hardware failures, service or tech-support problems? - Are there any configuration or backup strategy pitfalls that we must avoid to ensure successful daily backups? -rsvp, thanks Kent Monthei GlaxoSmithKline
