Topic: Flexbackup takes forever to restore one file

[Dan Williams]

Hi,
I am curious about others experiences on this:
I am in contact with no less that 10 sme servers 5.5 and 5.6 with seagate travan tape drives. I use the flexbackup to back up data and it works reliably (no errors in the report)
What drives me nuts is how long it takes to retrieve a file from tape.
In most tests I find it can take as much as hours to get the on file off of tape.
Is the same true for other backup programs being used on sme?
Why on a Windoze based pc with a seagate tape drive, can you restore on file in 15 minutes tops, yet the Flexbackup/Sme is so slow?
Thanks,
Dan

[Charlie Brady]

Dan Williams wrote:

> Why on a Windoze based pc with a seagate tape drive, can you
> restore on file in 15 minutes tops, yet the Flexbackup/Sme is
> so slow?

Presumably the windows software is using indexing, perhaps on-disk indexing, so that the whole tape doesn't get read.

Why are you restoring files so often?

Charlie

[Dan Williams]

Hi Charlie,
I guess it would "appear" we are restoring files so often, when in fact it is an situation where out of the ten or so servers(different companies, different locations) testing is done each month to randomly restore a few files / or directories, or both to assure reliability, and to demonstrate to the site admins the procedure.
Backup is always something that causes loss of sleep, it is not so much what you can back up, but what you can "restore" hence the testing.
I see a few are commenting about using tar instead of dump etc. Have asked for feedback on the performance there.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Dan

[Boris]

Maybe it worth to invest a little money in Tapeware.
Indexing, extensive reporting, e-mailing logs, fast restore, expandability, limited (or full) administration delegation and option to backup multiple servers (or workstations) to the same tape device my justify buying it for the commercial customers who value their data and want easy to use solution.

No, I don’t work for Tapeware, I am just happily use it.

[Dan Williams]

All of the drives come with tapeware.
Personally I want to NOT use third party software.
I want to use what is built into the OS, and for several reasons, one of which being not dependent on a server having that software loaded.
I do see SME 6 is moving towards using tar with the flexbackup, and still using flexbackup.
Dan

[Boris]

Its up to you, but installing on the freshly reinstalled server tapeware and full restore from the latest tape takes no more then do it with flexbackup. If you include time needed to reinstall all the addon and custom packages (not restored by flexbackup) its even faster. Many version of bandled with TapeDrives tapeware
offer free disaster recovery option (after free registration). This will restore whole server including all the customizations from "bare metal"
The reason why flexbackup is used - its free. Mitel can not bundle commercial and not free program with server, but you could use it yourself if you have license. All the MS Windows come with basic backup program too, but people still buying BackupExec, Arcserve, Tapeware etc. for better functionality then offered by bundled backup.
I just got feeling that you and your customers really care about their data and suggested solution that works very well, but its your choice to consider it or not. Perhaps some other people who read this thread may give it a try.

[Dan Williams]

Hi Boris,
I appreciate your comments, and now you have me more curious.
I do have in my posession the cd that came with one of the Seagate Drives that does have the seagate personal edition.
I had loaded it once but had troubles. Both in the looks of the display, and the keyboard.
Then there was the trouble of interpreting the actual program itself. As well, the schedule did not work, I could program it, but it would never run. I did contact Tapeware and got nothing for a solution technically other than comments to buy the serve pkg which was rediculously priced.
If you have a simple how to, or a few pointers to make the personal edition of the bundled tapeware software work on SME 5.5 / 5.6 I would give it a nother fo, and perhaps anything positive from that would help others in the forum.
Dan

[JeffC]

Dan,

The Single Workstation license of Tapeware is all that is required for backing up a SME server.  It will backup a single workstation OR server and supports all locally attached storage devices including tape robots.

I believe the product retails for about $99, and if you have the bundled version the upgrade is far less.  You can d/l a trial version that will work for 30 days and decide to license it if you are satisfied.

Installation and configuration is easy.  D/L the tar.gz, then untar and run ./install.  Follow the onscreen instructions and you're basically done.

We have moved all of our tape storage clients to this product.  Thanks to Mitel for including the flexbackup application, but for trivial money we utilize a supported commercial product for this mission critical service.

HTH,

-jeff

[Ed Form]

JeffC wrote:

> The Single Workstation license of Tapeware is all that is
> required for backing up a SME server.  It will backup a
> single workstation OR server and supports all locally
> attached storage devices including tape robots.

The autochanger module for Tapeware is an extra cost option which only works with the server versions of the product.

Ed Form

[JeffC]

Ed,

To quote the Tapeware Desktop page:

- Unlimited local attached tape drives
- Single drive, unlimited slot autoloader support

http://www.tapeware.com/Products/TapeWare/tw_desktop.htm

Cheers,

-jeff

[Boris]

Dan,
Tapeware offers free techsupport for trial version as well. My experience with their support is quite different. They are helpful and knowledgeable. Give a try to free trial maybe. Where is nothing (really) to suggest other then just read available manual. Once you understand the idea and how it works, rest is easy.
Good luck.

[Kelvin]

Dan,

Look at contribs.org for Shad Lord's Arkeia backup. It takes some getting used to but works well once you get used to it. I use it whenever possible now. The Java UI can also operate across a VPN so you could remotely manage a remote server's arkeia.

The Light version of Arkeia is free to use on Linux Servers.

Kelvin

[Ed Form]

JeffC wrote:
>
> Ed,
>
> To quote the Tapeware Desktop page:
>
> - Unlimited local attached tape drives
> - Single drive, unlimited slot autoloader support
>
> http://www.tapeware.com/Products/TapeWare/tw_desktop.htm

Sorry about that. My comment was a quote from a Tapeware distributor when I asked about waking up the autochanger side of my own HP DAT24X6. The Tapeware product bundled with the machine gives me a licence key for Tapeware itself, but the autochanger module is trial only!

Ed Form