+5
Here’s one to find out who has the largest backup in the forums.
Currently my largest server I backup is 45.1TB.
The largest one I had backing up was 115TB. It took a while but worked fine. I’ve been working on splitting it up in to multiple file servers to allow more concurrent streams to our backup/tape jobs.
+5
My biggest vm being backed up was a “Giant” 2TB SQL Server, and a 1.5TB Oracle Server.
they were not so big, but very critical, both running in Mechanic Discs, so the backups took so long to perform, and some times, the machines jammed, so they were backed up at night, out of working ours, and every time we did a change, fingers crossed for not messing the Full backup. 😂.
I’m a huge fan of redundancy. I used to have some fiber / SAN infrastructure I inherited from the guy before me that would cause outages every upgrade, change, reboot etc. Backups would cause systems to halt too.
I basically started fresh and rebuilt it all from the ground up. It works fine now but I still get nervous. lol
+7
I was made aware of a 98 TB VM backed up by a customer in South Africa. And some Windows Servers in the ½ PB range as well.
+5
I was made aware of a 98 TB VM backed up by a customer in South Africa. And some Windows Servers in the ½ PB range as well.
½ PB is pretty good. I know that VMware, Windows etc all support these monsters, but the manageability, portability, and time for backups is crazy. I guess it’s like the previous generation of techs never allowing volumes over 2TB. lol. That doesn’t scale today, but either I’m getting older and out of touch, or that is a ton of data in one spot. 🤣
+5
What kind of workload is it for you, that “needs” those monster VMs?
For our customers with VMs of ~30TB max. it’s mostly fileservers that have gone nuts during decades of lacking governance… 😉
There we usually have the discussion about NAS backup being an alternative with much better parallelity throughout the whole job run. Especially when V12 brings us NAS2tape.
Monster VMs tend to be the onces rolling in via a single thread at the end of a VM backup job.
Challenge with NAS backup for Windows/Linux servers is, that it gets waaaaaay more expensive. 1VM=1VUL vs. 30TB=60VUL…
+5
What kind of workload is it for you, that “needs” those monster VMs?
For our customers with VMs of ~30TB max. it’s mostly fileservers that have gone nuts during decades of lacking governance… 😉
There we usually have the discussion about NAS backup being an alternative with much better parallelity throughout the whole job run. Especially when V12 brings us NAS2tape.
Monster VMs tend to be the onces rolling in via a single thread at the end of a VM backup job.
Challenge with NAS backup for Windows/Linux servers is, that it gets waaaaaay more expensive. 1VM=1VUL vs. 30TB=60VUL…
I looked into NAS backup, Can’t afford it.
lets say i have 17 file servers at 50 TB each.
I have sockets currently 2 CPU hosts, I could handle all those servers on 1-2 hosts, so 4 sockets max
Even at a 6-1 ratio for conversion that is 24 VUl.
Now, if I switched to VUL license, full VM backups =17 VUL, but I can handle another 50 VM’s probably on these servers so I’m still ahead with sockets, but pay upfront so VUL’s could potentially work here at slight increase.
17*50=850TB. I’m going to let you guess how much that comes out to in NAS backup / VUL licenses.
At 500GB a VUL, that is like 1700 instead of 17.
Our file servers have crazy growth, mostly from video and legal requirements of how much data we have to keep. Some of it is 60+ years, some I have been told “forever”
The DB, Application, Web, and other servers are all reasonable in my environment.
With our DR and backup requirements too, it means keeping multiple copies of these on multiple SANS and Tape. My vendors all love me and probably owe me a few more lunches lol.
+5
I’ll add, I’m not anti VUL or NAS backup 😀
I’ll probably get some VUL licenses for NAS backup going forward, I’m just going to be picky about where I use them. NAS backup is awesome and I plan to use it, but more for backing up a NAS or share rather than a Windows Server VM.
Each backup should be treated it’s own way when it comes to requirements and pricing. If you have a NAS, it’s the perfect product.
+7
My biggest vm being backed up was a “Giant” 2TB SQL Server, and a 1.5TB Oracle Server.
they were not so big, but very critical, both running in Mechanic Discs, so the backups took so long to perform, and some times, the machines jammed, so they were backed up at night, out of working ours, and every time we did a change, fingers crossed for not messing the Full backup. 😂.
I was made aware of an 18TB Oracle backup (with the RMAN plugin)
+13
My biggest vm being backed up was a “Giant” 2TB SQL Server, and a 1.5TB Oracle Server.
they were not so big, but very critical, both running in Mechanic Discs, so the backups took so long to perform, and some times, the machines jammed, so they were backed up at night, out of working ours, and every time we did a change, fingers crossed for not messing the Full backup. 😂.
I was made aware of an 18TB Oracle backup (with the RMAN plugin)
OK, my Oracle databases are not that big. The biggest is around 5 -6 TB. But it is growing 😎
+7
My largest is about a 120TB file server….which is getting ready to grow as the client is starting to put a lot of 4k video on it. It’s been rough getting it through error checking backup defrags. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough space on the repo to setup incremental full’s due to size. It’s a process…..and we’re still trying to find a better way for it.
The 120 TB File server is that a VM, NAS or Lin/Win System?
+5
My biggest vm being backed up was a “Giant” 2TB SQL Server, and a 1.5TB Oracle Server.
they were not so big, but very critical, both running in Mechanic Discs, so the backups took so long to perform, and some times, the machines jammed, so they were backed up at night, out of working ours, and every time we did a change, fingers crossed for not messing the Full backup. 😂.
I was made aware of an 18TB Oracle backup (with the RMAN plugin)
OK, my Oracle databases are not that big. The biggest is around 5 -6 TB. But it is growing 😎
I think my biggest DB server is 14TB. I’m not doing app aware though as the SQL admins get scared when I say I should be taking over their backups..
Even after a demo...
+13
My biggest vm being backed up was a “Giant” 2TB SQL Server, and a 1.5TB Oracle Server.
they were not so big, but very critical, both running in Mechanic Discs, so the backups took so long to perform, and some times, the machines jammed, so they were backed up at night, out of working ours, and every time we did a change, fingers crossed for not messing the Full backup. 😂.
I was made aware of an 18TB Oracle backup (with the RMAN plugin)
OK, my Oracle databases are not that big. The biggest is around 5 -6 TB. But it is growing 😎
I think my biggest DB server is 14TB. I’m not doing app aware though as the SQL admins get scared when I say I should be taking over their backups..
Even after a demo...
I have convinced them, took me five years… 😂😂😂
They have seen that it is much easier for them to do the db backups via the plugins or the application aware backup.
I am looking forward to the MS SQL plugin in V12. 😎
+1
Sometimes on support I got customers with VMs around 30-40TB.
It's always a pain to troubleshooting problems with VMs like that, I hate. :(
+5
Sometimes on support I got customers with VMs around 30-40TB.
It's always a pain to troubleshooting problems with VMs like that, I hate. :(
Haha, “Will you stay on the phone with me while I restore this?” 🤣😋
+5
Well, Just got told I need to add another 50TB to this server, and I have another 300TB incoming, It’s quite critical too.
I’m going to have to create a few servers most likely to spread the load, but maybe I’ll do a test in Veeam after to see how long it takes.
*Sigh* I’m going to need a few more SANs just for backup data, and a few in production. lol.
+7
Well, Just got told I need to add another 50TB to this server, and I have another 300TB incoming, It’s quite critical too.
I’m going to have to create a few servers most likely to spread the load, but maybe I’ll do a test in Veeam after to see how long it takes.
*Sigh* I’m going to need a few more SANs just for backup data, and a few in production. lol.
Whoa, Scott! Pushing it!
+7
Ok, let’s turn this around ….. smallest VM?
+13
Ok, let’s turn this around ….. smallest VM?
Some tiny Linux VM with something between 3 and 6 GB… Was some very small Linux variant, don’t remember which one though….
+7
Ok, let’s turn this around ….. smallest VM?
Well in Rickatron Labbin, I do many powered off "empty disk" VMs but I have backed up the SureBackup network appliance that has no disks.
+5
I created a VM with No OS the other day so with data reduction essentially zero! I just wanted to test mounting a VMFS datastore to see if the VMDK file was still there. 😂
As a windows shop I’ve been giving a bit more to the system disks lately so I don’t really have “tiny” VM’s. I like to increase logging a fair bit for audits so the extra space is nice to not have to shuffle stuff around.
+5
Yep...always going to be Linux. I think my Pihole server is pretty darned small….but still a bit oversized I’m pretty sure at 16GB. But I have seen VM’s down in the 2GB or less range.
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