Backup Exec 11d Best Practices Guide: Advanced Open File Option

Details:

The Symantec Backup Exec Administrator's Guide is an excellent resource for the planning and implementation of backup strategies. The information in this document is provided as a supplement to the Administrator's Guide, Appendix B: Symantec Backup Exec Advanced Open File Option. For more information regarding the terms and usage used in this document, please refer to the Administrator's Guide.

The following Best Practices will help ensure smooth operations when using Backup Exec:

Environmental Considerations

Hard drive-AOFO uses hard drive space to create a cache file that will contain the equivalent of all changed data. In order to use AOFO there must be sufficient space to encompass all of the changed data. Changed data can include user files, system files, and the NTFS Master File Table(MFT). Note: The majority of the MFT will change during the backup.
Drive activity-In order for AOFO to accomplish a point in time backup, there must be no disk activity for a period of time known as the Quiet Time. During this time, AOFO is waiting for there to be no drive activity to ensure that all buffers have been flushed, and therefore all the data on the drive should be consistent. The default quiet time is 5 seconds. Is some case it is necessary to lower this setting, but it increases the risk of the data on the drive becoming inconsistent. This setting should never be lowered below 2. Instead, investigate what applications or services may be causing excessive disk writes.
Anti-Virus-Due to the nature of Anti-virus software, specific configuration changes may be necessary to function with AOFO. The AOFO cache file should be excluded from real-time scanners. Regular scans should not be run during backups with AOFO.
Disk utilities-Disk utilities such as scan disk or defragmenters should never be run during an AOFO backup.
Suggested Hardware-An ideal environment would contain a drive for use specifically by AOFO. This drive should: contain no user data, should never be backed up, and the AOFO cache file should be set to go to that drive.

Recommended Uses

Databases-AOFO should only be used for databases that do not have a specific agent. Note: Database recoverablity using AOFO cannot be guaranteed and should be tested prior to an actual failure
PSTs-AOFO Allows for the safe protection of Microsoft Outlook PST files
Things to avoid-Avoid running any processes or programs that would write excessive data to the drive being protected. Avoid copying large amounts of data to the drive being protected.

Multi-Volume Snap (Process logical volumes for backup one at a time)

What is multi-volume snap? The process of creating a snapshot for all drives in the backup job simultaneously.
Why multi-volume snap? Multi volume snaps are useful when related files reside on multiple drives such as databases with log files.
Why not multi-volume snap-Multi-volume snaps require all drives to be quiet for the quiet time-this can be exceedingly difficult on heavily utilized systems. When all drives in a system are backed up simultaneously with AOFO and a multi-volume snap is done, the AOFO cache files (one for each drive) each cache file resides on the volume being backed up (C's cache file is on C, D's cache file is on D, etc.) when this is the case, the cache file cannot grow to accommodate large amounts of changed data. If multi volume snap is disabled the cache file will be placed on an alternate drive one at a time which allows AOFO to obtain quiet time one drive at a time and grow the cache file when necessary

Products Applied:
Backup Exec for Windows Servers 11d (11.0)

Last Updated: July 14 2008 06:02 PM GMT
Expires on: 07-14-2009

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Subjects:
Backup Exec for Windows Servers
   Information Development: Best Practices
   Open File Option: Configure
   Publishing Status: Best Practices

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Operating Systems:
Windows 2000

Advanced Server SP4, Advanced Server Windows Powered SP4, Datacenter Server SP4, Professional SP4, Server SP4, Server Windows Powered SP4

Windows XP

Pro 5.1 64 bit SP2, Pro 5.1 SP2

Windows Server 2003

DataCenter SP1, DataCenter SP1(x64), Enterprise SP1(x64), Enterprise ServerSP1, R2, Standard Server SP1, Storage Server SP1

Windows Small Business Server 2003

Premium Edition, Standard Edition

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