Backup Software - Commvault Galaxy?

Author

Commvault Galaxy?

Paul Hutchings

2004-11-14, 7:45 am

Is anyone using it on Windows to backup a number (approx 20) of file and
application servers on a gig switched network, to an LTO library?

Any thoughts on it?

We currently use Arcserve, we're replacing a bunch of kit and Dell now
offer Galaxy, we had their rep in to see us and it looks like a "proper"
enterprise product rather than the likes of Arcserve/Netbackup which look
like standalone products that they've tried to scale upwards.

regards
Paul
--
paul <at> spamcop.net

Frank Foss

2004-11-16, 2:20 pm

Paul Hutchings wrote:
> Is anyone using it on Windows to backup a number (approx 20) of file and
> application servers on a gig switched network, to an LTO library?
>
> Any thoughts on it?
>
> We currently use Arcserve, we're replacing a bunch of kit and Dell now
> offer Galaxy, we had their rep in to see us and it looks like a "proper"
> enterprise product rather than the likes of Arcserve/Netbackup which look
> like standalone products that they've tried to scale upwards.
>
> regards
> Paul

I use CommVault Galaxy in my environment.
I have a HP MSL6060 library, with the fibre option.
I have 8 Large Linux fileservers that back up to disk and tape using
fibre channel directly.

It is the best system I have used. Hands down.

It is a capable, and complex system. Training classes are essential.

It is very configurable, and everything can be automated using policies
and schedules.

It does "synthetic full" backups, which consolidates your incremental
backups into a 'full' backup without re-copying data from the client.
Very useful, and fast.

If you can, a fibre channel solution will offload the network by not
using it for data transport.
Sending data over the network will still work well, tho.

My only concern in my environment is that the "scan" phase takes a
while. I have many 2TB filesystems with large number of small files, and
'tagging' them for backup is slow and resource-intensive, before the
actual backup starts.
If you have smaller than 300GB filesystems, I wouldn't worry.

It is also unforgiving of errors in your DNS setup. It needs to work
flawlessly, reverse lookups also.

They also have archiving solutions for windows/exchange and products to
migrate seldom-accessed files from disk to tape transparently.

Support is good.

I would recommend CommVault. And advise against overstretching solutions
like BackupExec or ArcServe.

Paul Hutchings

2004-11-17, 5:45 pm

[posted and mailed]

Frank Foss <fozzie_beer@hotmail.com> wrote in news:2vv94iF2otts8U1@uni-
berlin.de:

> I use CommVault Galaxy in my environment.
> I have a HP MSL6060 library, with the fibre option.
> I have 8 Large Linux fileservers that back up to disk and tape using
> fibre channel directly.
>
> It is the best system I have used. Hands down.

Thanks Frank, I appreciate it's the only reply (what a dead group!) but
it's still reassuring to get an opinion from someone who uses it.

> It is a capable, and complex system. Training classes are essential.

That was the impression I got when we had the rep in, he had it installed
on his laptop and it looks like it can do _a lot_ but having used Arcserve
for so long it's sometimes tricky to view products with no preconceptions.

> My only concern in my environment is that the "scan" phase takes a
> while. I have many 2TB filesystems with large number of small files, and
> 'tagging' them for backup is slow and resource-intensive, before the
> actual backup starts.
> If you have smaller than 300GB filesystems, I wouldn't worry.

Hmm.. what we will hopefully be having is a large central fileserver
consisting an HP MSA20 SCSI attached, SATA drive enclosure with approx 3tb
storage, attached to a HP server of some sort which the tape library will
also connect to.

The array will hold around 700gb to start with and will obviously grow as
we try to lose physical fileservers.

The tape library is a Dell Powervault 128 twin drive LTO library.

> It is also unforgiving of errors in your DNS setup. It needs to work
> flawlessly, reverse lookups also.

That's all setup prefectly.. I'll take the credit for that :-)

> I would recommend CommVault. And advise against overstretching solutions
> like BackupExec or ArcServe.

Arcserve 2000 is what we use right now. Frankly it's horrible.

At present we tend to do fairly normal GFS rotations, my boss deals
with it andknows the specifics, but basically daily tapes stay in the
library and get overwritten each day of the week on a differential backup,
and on a Friday either a weekly or monthly full backup takes place -
standard thing for something like Galaxy I assume?

Thanks for taking the time to reply, it's appreciated.

regards
Paul
--
paul <at> spamcop.net

Frank Foss

2004-11-17, 5:45 pm

Paul Hutchings wrote:
> [posted and mailed]
>
> Frank Foss <fozzie_beer@hotmail.com> wrote in news:2vv94iF2otts8U1@uni-
> berlin.de:
>
>
>
>
> Thanks Frank, I appreciate it's the only reply (what a dead group!) but
> it's still reassuring to get an opinion from someone who uses it.
>
>
>
>
> That was the impression I got when we had the rep in, he had it installed
> on his laptop and it looks like it can do _a lot_ but having used Arcserve
> for so long it's sometimes tricky to view products with no preconceptions.
>
>
>
>
>
> Hmm.. what we will hopefully be having is a large central fileserver
> consisting an HP MSA20 SCSI attached, SATA drive enclosure with approx 3tb
> storage, attached to a HP server of some sort which the tape library will
> also connect to.
>
> The array will hold around 700gb to start with and will obviously grow as
> we try to lose physical fileservers.
>
> The tape library is a Dell Powervault 128 twin drive LTO library.
>
>
>
>
> That's all setup prefectly.. I'll take the credit for that :-)
>
>
>
>
> Arcserve 2000 is what we use right now. Frankly it's horrible.
>
> At present we tend to do fairly normal GFS rotations, my boss deals
> with it andknows the specifics, but basically daily tapes stay in the
> library and get overwritten each day of the week on a differential backup,
> and on a Friday either a weekly or monthly full backup takes place -
> standard thing for something like Galaxy I assume?

All of that is policy-based.
You create a storage policy. The "primary" copy can be either tape or
disk. Data will be sent here first.
The primary copy can have retentions associated with it that says "keep
fulls for 3 months, and incrementals for 1 month". Galaxy will keep
track of that. You can have secondary copies made for offsite storage,
with infinite retention. You can specify which runs will be copied to
offsite, fulls, full+incrementals, etc.
Once policies are set up they will basically do all the media management
and recycle tapes for you.

You can even have fulls and incremental backups from the same FS sent to
different storage policies, if you want.

It's complicated, but some training and experimenting should clear it up.

>
> Thanks for taking the time to reply, it's appreciated.
>
> regards
> Paul

No problem.
The group IS a little dead, tho

Paul Hutchings

2004-11-27, 7:45 am

Erwin van Londen <erwin@storage.homeunix.com> wrote in
news:41a5fad9$0$44096$5fc3050@dreader2.news.tiscali.nl:

> The support is wat we expected, far better than Legato, and like the
> frank said it's very configurable. We use it in combination with a HP
> ESL9595 library fully equiped with SDLT320 drives. Works like charm.

Thanks Erwin. I got around to installing the pilot pack (trial) this week.
It's a little awkward as we don't have a spare LTO library lying around to
test it with, but it looks good from the small amount I've played.

regards
Paul
--
paul <at> spamcop.net

hughes

2004-12-08, 5:46 pm

We've been using Commvault for over a year and it is terrible! We has
ARcserve 2000 and I wish I could go back to it, the product and support
from Commvault have been awful. It was supposed to reduce management
tasks and be more compatible with Windows and windows applications, I
swear I am doing more now than I was with Arcserve. We back up about
60 Windows file servers, 8 SQL, and couple Oracle and Lotus and I have
had tons of problems, agents dropping out of the Commcell for no
reason, the upgrade to version 5 completely failed, etc. I could go on
forever but if you are considering going to Commvault I would suggest
trying out everything else before you spend the money.

dave101

2004-12-30, 8:13 pm

Wow that’s to bad you seem to have some bad luck. We have CommVault at 37 sites backing up over 460 servers, 37 Exchange servers, 60 SQL servers, Unix and Oracle for 3 years. Some where around 15 TB a night. CommVault is hands down the best enterprise solution out there and our executives seem to agree. When you do 2 disaster recovery tests per month at 37 sites and they always work 100%. That’s solid coding in my book are failure rate is less than 1% per 15 TB. I would look into your switches and hardware solution for your bad luck run. We will run up to 100TB of storage in the next 2 years. Manage that with Veritas or any other package. We tried they failed. Good luck I would watch CommVault in 2005-2006. Microsoft loves CommVault they use it them selves. nuff said.

later