HPE Storage Users Group

How do ya'll handle DB ( or any ) server backup that puts a heavy load on the 3PAR?

We seem to be running into a situation where an overnight backup is straining an F400 to the point that it's impacting service time on other volumes.

Would AO/DO/PO help? Thinking ahead, if we had a 7400 with FC and some SSD, would it be advisable to allow AO to move 'hot' VVs to SSD from FC during a backup window?

If I understand AO correctly, it does an evaluate first, then some time later it moves the data. If backups ( heavy read load ) moves to SSD, how might that impact day-to-day operations where it's more mixed, read and write?

AO wouldn't really help it looks at high IOps rather than low IOps and high MB/s.

You could take a brute force approach and throw more disk at the problem, assuming that's where the bottleneck lays or look at how you actually do the backups which is probably the best way to fix things. Outside of that you could look at limiting the bandwidth at the fabric level. Using Priority Optimization you could either cap the backup throughput to a specific MB/s or alternatively provide a more dynamic throughput window using a minimum performance goal for the other apps.

We handled it by getting away from traditional backups. We do traditional backups for databases and critical file shares, but all other systems (over 800) we simply do array snaps. For VMs we have a script that snaps the VM then the array. Since we replicate everything to our DR array we also snap that array as well. We keep 14 days of snaps and it has taken a substantial load off the array.

Could you look at changing strategy around your backup policy to reduce IOP's:

-Using synthetic fulls rather than traditional fulls
-Using a backup product that supports dedupe
-Stagger your backups during your backup window so they don't all kick off at the same time
-If you are using any application based backups like native SQL backups schedule these outside your main backup window

Also check that AO is not moving chunklets during the backup window, this will create additional load. Schedule AO so that it completes before your backup window