Stan Galper
September 19th, 2006, 05:24 PM
The Enterprise product has a great feature called Backup Server, which lets you define the maximum number of backups to be kept in a storage location. When the number of backups in that location exceeds the maximum, Backup Server consolidates the oldest incremental backup with the previous full backup, thereby creating a new full backup and reducing the number of backups by one.
It does this by copying all of the backup files into a new set of backup files, and then removing the old ones.
BUT.... there's a single program that combines these backups, and on a backup server with multiple locations, all of those consolidations run at the same time. Each consolidation requires, temporarily, twice the disk space: the space for the old backup files, and the space for the new backup files. If there are multiple locations on that backup drive that need consolidation, there's not enough disk space to do them all at the same time, unless you keep the disk half-full and leave the other half for the consolidation output.
The solution is easy: offer the option to single-thread the consolidation of multiple backup locations, so that they run one at a time. Then you only need enough disk space to duplicate one of those backup locations at a time.
It does this by copying all of the backup files into a new set of backup files, and then removing the old ones.
BUT.... there's a single program that combines these backups, and on a backup server with multiple locations, all of those consolidations run at the same time. Each consolidation requires, temporarily, twice the disk space: the space for the old backup files, and the space for the new backup files. If there are multiple locations on that backup drive that need consolidation, there's not enough disk space to do them all at the same time, unless you keep the disk half-full and leave the other half for the consolidation output.
The solution is easy: offer the option to single-thread the consolidation of multiple backup locations, so that they run one at a time. Then you only need enough disk space to duplicate one of those backup locations at a time.