White Papers
Table Of Contents
- 1 Installing and configuring the DR Series system for use with CommVault Simpana
- 2 Configuring CIFS and NFS containers for CommVault Simpana
- 2.1 Creating containers in the DR Series system
- 2.2 Adding the target container(s) to CommVault Simpana
- 2.2 Setting up a single system environment (DR Series system as NFS disk library)
- 2.3 Setting up a replicated system environment
- 2.4 Using the continuous data replicator to replicate client data to a DR Series container
- 3 Configuring VTL for CommVault Simpana
- 4 Setting up the DR Series system cleaner
- 5 Monitoring deduplication, compression, and performance
- A VTL configuration guidelines
- A.1 Managing VTL protocol accounts and credentials
- A.2 VTL default account summary table
- A.3 Managing VTL media and space use
- A.3.1 General performance guidelines for DMA configuration
- A.3.2 Physical space sizing and planning
- A.3.3 Logical VTL geometry and media sizing
- A.3.4 Media retention and grouping
- A.3.5 VTL media count guidelines
- A.3.6 Adding the VTL media to the container
- A.3.7 Updating CommVault to identify newly added VTL media
- A.3.8 Space reclamation
- B Glossary
87 Setting Up the Dell™ DR Series System as a CIFS or VTL Backup Target on CommVault Simpana |
April 2015
A.3 Managing VTL media and space use
A.3.1 General performance guidelines for DMA configuration
• The DR Series system (version 3.2 and later) provides inline VTL deduplication,
compression, and encryption at rest functionality. Backup applications (such as Dell
NetVault, Symantec BackupExec, Symantec NetBackup, and so on) should be
configured so that any multiplexing, pre-compression, software-side deduplication, or
encryption is disabled. Enabling any of these features may adversely affect the space
savings and ingest performance of the DR Series system VTL feature.
• Slots and media should be configured so as to accommodate the environment backup
requirements. Initially, the logical capacity of a VTL should be no more than twice the
physical size of the DR Series system. If the initial VTL setup is over-subscribed at
higher than a 2-1 ratio without proper planning the DR Series system could fill up
prematurely and cause unexpected system outage. It is highly advisable to configure
the DR Series system VTL feature such that the media count be made to
accommodate your initial data protection requirements. and then media be added as
the deduplication statistics become available to ascertain growth, media, and space
requirements.
• Media Type selection will depend on a number of factors including the DMA used, the
backup cycles, data sources, and more. As a general rule, using smaller tapes is better
than using larger tapes so as to allow for a higher level of control over space usage by
backup operations. This also allows for easier handling in the event of a system
running out of physical space as well as the normal data cleanup procedures.
• Adding media to an existing DR Series system VTL is painless and should be leveraged
to incrementally add media as needed. Although this may require a higher level of
involvement in managing the media usage, it will result in better performance and
avoid unplanned outages.
A.3.2 Physical space sizing and planning
Various factors such as total data footprint, change rate, backup frequency and data
lifecycle policies will dictate how much physical space will be needed to accommodate
the Virtual Tape Libraries within a DR Series environment. In addition, if other container
types are hosted these two must be factored into space requirement calculations. As a
general rule the following can be used as a reference architecture to determine the basic
capacity needed for a given virtual tape library container:
1. Determine Existing Data Set
2. Determine the change rate (Differential)
3. Determine the retention period
4. Calculate the data footprint during the retention period for existing data sets based
on a 10-1 deduplication ratio