Backup Central

I would like to know if anyone has any information on Syncsort NSB? Pro’s and Con’s, would anyone consider leaving Netbackup to go to Syncsort NSB on NetApp in a large enterprise?

Two questions for you:
1) Do/Would you use synthetic fulls (Syncsort does incrementals
forever)?
2) Do your clients have the horsepower to handle source side
deduplication?

We could not move as there are some legacy systems they do
not fully support in our environment.

Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-
bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of dejohn61
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2011 4:56 PM
To: VERITAS-BU < at > MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN.EDU
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Syncsort NSB vs Netbackup?

I would like to know if anyone has any information on Syncsort NSB? Pro's
and Con's, would anyone consider leaving Netbackup to go to Syncsort NSB
on NetApp in a large enterprise?

+----------------------------------------------------------------------
|This was sent by don.johnson < at > watson.com via Backup Central.
|Forward SPAM to abuse < at > backupcentral.com.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------


_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

I'd be interested in hearing your drivers for moving away from NBU. That
might help others form a better response.

-Rusty

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of dejohn61
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2011 4:56 PM
To: VERITAS-BU < at > MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN.EDU
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Syncsort NSB vs Netbackup?

I would like to know if anyone has any information on Syncsort NSB? Pros
and Cons, would anyone consider leaving Netbackup to go to Syncsort NSB
on NetApp in a large enterprise?

+----------------------------------------------------------------------
|This was sent by don.johnson < at > watson.com via Backup Central.
|Forward SPAM to abuse < at > backupcentral.com.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

Thanks for your reply Rusty, I myself being NBU centric am against this and just trying to build a case to my managment to stay on NBU.
I do not think it will happen but just covering my bases.

Thanks
Don


I'd be interested in hearing your drivers for moving away from NBU. That
might help others form a better response.

-Rusty

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of dejohn61
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2011 4:56 PM
To: VERITAS-BU < at > MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN.EDU
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Syncsort NSB vs Netbackup?

I would like to know if anyone has any information on Syncsort NSB? Pros
and Cons, would anyone consider leaving Netbackup to go to Syncsort NSB
on NetApp in a large enterprise?

Hi Ken,
Yes I would have to use there snap capabilities with the dedup so I believe they consider that synthetic fulls. after the initial full data set. I am pushing for a Data Domain solution the dedup ratio is much better, and to answer your second question, That is one of my main arguments is getting rid of media servers to let the clients do all the work in our environment is really scary thought.
So out of the 2 responses I received, I am very comfortable staying with NBU and a DD dedup solution.

We also would have stuff we could not move over like AIX oracle and AIX Unix

Thanks for your input and any other Syncsort info is more than welcome
Don

Two questions for you:
1) Do/Would you use synthetic fulls (Syncsort does incrementals
forever)?
2) Do your clients have the horsepower to handle source side
deduplication?

We could not move as there are some legacy systems they do
not fully support in our environment.

Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-
bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of dejohn61
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2011 4:56 PM
To: VERITAS-BU < at > MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN.EDU
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Syncsort NSB vs Netbackup?

I would like to know if anyone has any information on Syncsort NSB? Pro's
and Con's, would anyone consider leaving Netbackup to go to Syncsort NSB
on NetApp in a large enterprise?

Hello,
Just a hint.
If you will use NBU and DD with BOOST, the synthetic backups are instant. NO
reading and writing to device.
In fact this is a future of all OST devices.

stefanos

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of dejohn61
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 1:56 AM
To: VERITAS-BU < at > MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN.EDU
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Syncsort NSB vs Netbackup?

Hi Ken,
Yes I would have to use there snap capabilities with the dedup so I believe
they consider that synthetic fulls. after the initial full data set. I am
pushing for a Data Domain solution the dedup ratio is much better, and to
answer your second question, That is one of my main arguments is getting rid
of media servers to let the clients do all the work in our environment is
really scary thought.
So out of the 2 responses I received, I am very comfortable staying with NBU
and a DD dedup solution.

We also would have stuff we could not move over like AIX oracle and AIX Unix

Thanks for your input and any other Syncsort info is more than welcome
Don

Two questions for you:
1) Do/Would you use synthetic fulls (Syncsort does incrementals
forever)?
2) Do your clients have the horsepower to handle source side
deduplication?

We could not move as there are some legacy systems they do
not fully support in our environment.

Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-
bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of dejohn61
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2011 4:56 PM
To: VERITAS-BU < at > MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN.EDU
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Syncsort NSB vs Netbackup?

I would like to know if anyone has any information on Syncsort NSB? Pro's
and Con's, would anyone consider leaving Netbackup to go to Syncsort NSB
on NetApp in a large enterprise?

+----------------------------------------------------------------------
|This was sent by don.johnson < at > watson.com via Backup Central.
|Forward SPAM to abuse < at > backupcentral.com.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------


_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

When did this get announced?

I have been bugging our EMC Backup rep about this, I would have figured
they would have been all over giving me the news.

On 9/30/2011 1:14 AM, smpt wrote:
Hello,
Just a hint.
If you will use NBU and DD with BOOST, the synthetic backups are instant. NO
reading and writing to device.
In fact this is a future of all OST devices.

stefanos

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of dejohn61
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 1:56 AM
To: VERITAS-BU < at > MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN.EDU
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Syncsort NSB vs Netbackup?

Hi Ken,
Yes I would have to use there snap capabilities with the dedup so I believe
they consider that synthetic fulls. after the initial full data set. I am
pushing for a Data Domain solution the dedup ratio is much better, and to
answer your second question, That is one of my main arguments is getting rid
of media servers to let the clients do all the work in our environment is
really scary thought.
So out of the 2 responses I received, I am very comfortable staying with NBU
and a DD dedup solution.

We also would have stuff we could not move over like AIX oracle and AIX Unix

Thanks for your input and any other Syncsort info is more than welcome
Don

Two questions for you:
1) Do/Would you use synthetic fulls (Syncsort does incrementals
forever)?
2) Do your clients have the horsepower to handle source side
deduplication?

We could not move as there are some legacy systems they do
not fully support in our environment.

Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces< at> mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-bu-
bounces< at> mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of dejohn61
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2011 4:56 PM
To: VERITAS-BU< at> MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN.EDU
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Syncsort NSB vs Netbackup?

I would like to know if anyone has any information on Syncsort NSB? Pro's
and Con's, would anyone consider leaving Netbackup to go to Syncsort NSB
on NetApp in a large enterprise?

+----------------------------------------------------------------------
|This was sent by don.johnson < at > watson.com via Backup Central.
|Forward SPAM to abuse < at > backupcentral.com.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------


_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

This is not true (yet).  We've recently talked do DD engineering in addition to trying it ourselves and confirmed both ways that optimized synthetics aren't  currently  supported. On Sep 30, 2011 3:28 AM, "David Stanaway" <david < at > stanaway.net ([email]david < at > stanaway.net[/email])> wrote:> When did this get announced?

I have been bugging our EMC Backup rep about this, I would have figured
they would have been all over giving me the news.

On 9/30/2011 1:14 AM, smpt wrote:
Hello,
Just a hint.
If you will use NBU and DD with BOOST, the synthetic backups are instant. NO
reading and writing to device.
In fact this is a future of all OST devices.

stefanos

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu ([email]veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu[/email])
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu ([email]veritas-bu-bounces < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu[/email])] On Behalf Of dejohn61
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 1:56 AM
To: VERITAS-BU < at > MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN.EDU ([email]VERITAS-BU < at > MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN.EDU[/email])
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Syncsort NSB vs Netbackup?

Hi Ken,
Yes I would have to use there snap capabilities with the dedup so I believe
they consider that synthetic fulls. after the initial full data set. I am
pushing for a Data Domain solution the dedup ratio is much better, and to
answer your second question, That is one of my main arguments is getting rid
of media servers to let the clients do all the work in our environment is
really scary thought.
So out of the 2 responses I received, I am very comfortable staying with NBU
and a DD dedup solution.

We also would have stuff we could not move over like AIX oracle and AIX Unix

Thanks for your input and any other Syncsort info is more than welcome
Don

Two questions for you:
1) Do/Would you use synthetic fulls (Syncsort does incrementals
forever)?
2) Do your clients have the horsepower to handle source side
deduplication?

We could not move as there are some legacy systems they do
not fully support in our environment.

Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces< at> veritas-bu- ([email]veritas-bu-[/email])
bounces< at> mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of dejohn61
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2011 4:56 PM
To: VERITAS-BU< at> MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN.EDU
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Syncsort NSB vs Netbackup?

I would like to know if anyone has any information on Syncsort NSB? Pro's
and Con's, would anyone consider leaving Netbackup to go to Syncsort NSB
on NetApp in a large enterprise?

+----------------------------------------------------------------------
|This was sent by don.johnson < at > watson.com ([email]don.johnson < at > watson.com[/email]) via Backup Central.
|Forward SPAM to abuse < at > backupcentral.com ([email]abuse < at > backupcentral.com[/email]).
+----------------------------------------------------------------------


_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu ([email]Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu[/email])
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu ([email]Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu[/email])
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu ([email]Veritas-bu < at > mailman.eng.auburn.edu[/email])
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu

Hello,

I am with product management at Syncsort and want to reply to a few things. I realize these forums are not a place for vendor commercials, but there are some factual errors and confusion that needs to be corrected. I will stick to that.

"Do your clients have the horsepower to handle source side deduplication?"

Syncsort NSB does not do source-side deduplication. We use a change journal to track changed blocks. While the end result is similar to dedupe (less data sent over the network), the process is substantially different. The NSB agent does not need to scan the file system and hash data the way dedupe does. It simply tracks block changes while they occur, which creates a near-zero impact on the host. When a backup is scheduled to run, the agent already knows the blocks that are updated and sends them to the target, which is NetApp storage.

The process is similar to what VMware does with Changed Block Tracking (CBT) only we do it for both physical and virtual servers (you can use CBT if you want for Agentless Vmware backups).

At the target, NSB uses NetApp Snapshot capabilities. So we do not do a synthetic full. There is no post-backup process that needs to be run, nor do you need to do periodic fulls the way you do with a lot of synthetic processes. An NSB backup is useable right after it completes, and you can access any incremental backup as a full backup image because of how we leverage the NetApp snapshot pointers. With this, any size data image can be mounted directly back to a server in about two minutes.

"For a Data Domain solution the dedup ratio is much better"

This is a misleading statement in some ways. The reason you get very high numbers from a target dedupe solution -- like 95% dedupe ratios or whatever it is -- is because you are always feeding it duplicate data. Naturally, if I am doing incremental file backups plus a weekly full that has 90% redundant data, I will get a high dedupe ratio. But consider the big picture. You are asking your server environment to process all that data, both from file system scanning, pulling the data off disk and sending it over the network. In effect, you make your servers move a huge amount of data just so you delete it when it gets to the target. With NSB, you don't move that data in the first place, so naturally the target dedupe ratios are going to be much smaller. The bottom line is who much storage do you have to use, and in that respect the two solutions are similar.


"That is one of my main arguments is getting rid of media servers to let the clients do all the work in our environment is really scary thought."

Again, I want to repeat that the clients will do very little work because NSB does NOT do source-side data scanning or hashing. However, you do eliminate media servers. The NSB agent sends data directly to the NetApp storage, so that eliminates a layer of your backup architecture. Fewer servers, fewer switch ports, a point of failure and management eliminated.

I hope that clears up any misconceptions about how NSB works. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any further questions, or post them here. Good luck in your search for a data protection solution. It's important to consider what will work best in your environment and what will meet your backup window goals and recovery SLAs.

Regards,

Peter Eicher
Syncsort
peicher@syncsort.com