DPM 2010 - use only VTL for Short/Long Term Retention?

The technical support forum for Firestreamer (the virtual tape library).
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JimP
Posts: 1
Joined: 08 Sep 2011, 18:06

Post by JimP »

Hi FS Support,

I just built a new Server 2008 R2 Ent (SP1) 64bit VM to function as our DPM 2010 environment with the intention of backing up our Executive PCs for up to 6 months data retention.

DPM 2010 is installed along with Firestreamer and at first glance, this seems to be a very powerful and scalable backup solution.

The OS sits on a 100GB partition, DPM has 2TB worth of disk space in the Storage Pool (for short term data retention) and I've given Firestreamer a 1TB partition (for long term data retention).

Seeing the data is going to be backed up to actual disk drives, whether short term or long term, i'm wondering if it makes sense to even use a Storage Pool within DPM. Why not just give all 3TB of space to Firestreamer and set up my Protection Groups for short/long term retention to my Firestreamer Tape Library?

Is there a pro and con to each scenario? Can I forego the Storage Pool and use only Firestreamer for my short term and long term data retention needs of up to 6 months?

We're about to purchase a Firestreamer license with the possibility of more, depending on performance/stability, and this is our point of pain.

Any help/insight would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

Jim P.
Network|Exchange Administrator
jsf
Cristalink Support
Posts: 300
Joined: 29 Aug 2010, 09:03

Post by jsf »

It should work just fine. I suggest contacting Microsoft Support for a detailed list of pros and cons.

Firestreamer doesn't care whether it's a short or long term backup. From DPM's standpoint, a local disk makes sense, for example, when you don't have a tape library, or when the tape library has an insufficient number of slots, or when you don't have enough high-performance tapes for short term backups, and so on. None of these reasons is applicable to Firestreamer.
Best regards,
John Smith
Cristalink Support
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