Backup strategy for large storage server...

Hi. I'm trying to backup a large storage server with 3.2 TB worth of storage space. 900 GB is currently being used. We are doing offsite backups through a 100 MB fiber connection and backing up to a 9 TB Dell Power Vault. I just tried making a full backup and it took over 3 days to complete. Is this normal for this amount of data? Why else would it take so long?

Also, I would like to perform incremental backups after my full backup. How long should I keep performing incremental backups between full backups? 30 days? 15 days? Every six months?

Thanks!

 

Does your server throttle back apparent resource "hogs" or large file transfers? That could slow things down.

As for the nubmer of incs, a full/inc set will be junk is only one byte is bad in any of the files, so limiting the number of incs is good. What's the right number? How long should you grow your hair? It's that kind of question. Personally, I don't do incs at all, but then, I'm sometimes called a longhair. ;-)

 

How would I know if my server is throttling large file transfers? We're using Server 2003 Enterprise R2.

 

Anybody else have any suggestions for backing up a large file server?

 

Extermely large files are always a hassle.

I would make 1 FULL a week and the rest incrementals. The creation of an incremental would just take a fraction of the time of a full backup..

BUT!! If you want also to do a validation of your incremental this would take very long because at the moment acronis always verifies everything FULL + incrementals.

so for example if the incremental takes to 10 minutes to make It could take 3 hours to verify... and that is you biggest problem..

 

Why not do weekly full backups as suggested but daily differentials? I'd consider that safer.
Even better would be to split system and data - use Acronis for system, and something simpler and more robust such as synctoy for the data.
Phil