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Evaluating - questions

Posted: 13 Dec 2010, 11:15
by emerson8
Been testing Firestreamer as a "work-around" for BackupExec not supplying good performance with backup-2-disc.
And initial experience shows big improvement by using Firestreamer instead of BackupExec backing directly to the storage Im using.

But, Im wondering if Im having an issue or if it is "by design"....

Scenario;
Server with Internal Storage which W2k03 runs from;
External Storage (Promise Vtrak 310p) over U320/SCSI and an Adaptec 39320 card.
The external storage was initially setup a one big Raid with approx 9Tb's which off course Firestreamer didn't support.
So, re-created the external raid to 4x1.9TB logical drives and prepared all of them according to the "getting started".

But, it seems that Firestreamer only activates 1 of these drives ?
Is this by design ?, only 1 can be active at a time ?
If so, any way to better use the approx 9TB's of storage I've got available ?

Thanks...

Re: Evaluating - questions

Posted: 13 Dec 2010, 17:42
by jsf
Are you asking about Firestreamer-RM 2.x (for NTBackup) or Firestreamer 4.0 (for Microsoft DPM)?

If about Firestreamer-RM:
In drive media mode, Firestreamer-RM connects to the first available medium. "To avoid confusion, make sure there is only one drive with a medium inside during an interactive backup or restore operation" (see https://www.cristalink.com/fsrm/hh.aspx?id=start).

If you are asking about Firestreamer 4.0, please post your question to Firestreamer Forum. Is there any reason of why you are using drive media as opposed to file media?

Re: Evaluating - questions

Posted: 13 Dec 2010, 17:54
by emerson8
Well, I guess I'll have to practice reading again....sorry about that.

Yes, it's the Firestreamer RM Im testing. Trying to sort out a "need" we have ...somewhere down a dead-end.
Customer have a quite big Netware cluster (but backup beeing done without cluster-support )

So, only option today with a working/speed in regards to Netware Agent is BackupExec.
In this case, it's ver 10 ( not 10d and not 2010)

Problem we're having is that LTO4 drives arent enough for a nights backup even though we've split the job's up.
So, next solution was to test backup-2-disc which with BackupExec directly towards locally attach SCSI-u320 kabinett works
terribly slow. We're getting approx 300-400Mb min to disk while getting approx 2000MB min to LTO4 drive.

When testing Firestreamer, towards the exact same disks/kabinett, speed jumps from 300-400MB upto almost 2000Mb/min.
So,, looks gr8. Issue remaing for us is off course that this 9TB kabinett used as storage can't be used as GUID partition, so next solution
would be splitting it up into 2 TB's basic partition drives, but then this isn't a solution either since it's quite hard using these as removeable.

I dl'd the Firestreamer 4.0, but that's not a solution for us ( I guess) since we have to use BackupExec for it's Netware agent support...
So,, we're stuck somewhere in the middle...

Thanks for the input.

Re: Evaluating - questions

Posted: 13 Dec 2010, 18:23
by jsf
So you are using Firestreamer-RM with Backup Exec. Why don't you try file media? In that case, you can format your 9TB as a single partition, and create several .fsrm files (virtual tapes) there. It should be much more convenient than drive media.

You can also try Firestreamer 4.0. I am not sure whether the media changer will work with Backup Exec, but the tape drives should. By default, you have 5 tape drives in Firestreamer. You can load all of your disks as virtual tapes (in drive media mode) into four tape drives. Then you wouldn't have to change tapes, as opposed to Firestreamer-RM that supports a single tape drive only. You can also use file media with the 9TB partition.

Re: Evaluating - questions

Posted: 13 Dec 2010, 19:38
by emerson8
Thanks again,,

Well, I'll give Firestreamer 4.0 a shot again...didn't really got it work initially, but that was probably/maybe me,
I tried to understand how to load "media" into the slot's ...though I might have given up to soon.

Other option off course could be using virtual tape files, though those seems to be made only with firestreamer 4.0 or am I missing something ?

again,, thanks...

Re: Evaluating - questions

Posted: 13 Dec 2010, 19:47
by jsf
With Firestreamer 4.0, loading media into slots may not work with Backup Exec because the latter may not be able to move tapes from slots to tape drives. Try loading tapes directly into tape drives.

Firestreamer-RM does support file media, see http://www.cristalink.com/fsrm/hh.aspx?id=file.

Re: Evaluating - questions

Posted: 14 Dec 2010, 11:59
by emerson8
Re-did the install by removing all firestream products and rebooted,
installed again, this time only 4.0, did the edit and created 4 tape drives and created new media/saved/rebooted.
Now doing tests with BackupExec which DO seem to work.

I'll be back ..!!.
Thanks,