Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?
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@MattSpeller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@MattSpeller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
Quantity of data to backup
Time slot (in hours) backups require
Add in "wiggle room" as you see fit (ie, backup done in 2/3 of the timeslot to allow for growth / dumb shit)
Select appropriate backup flavor combination as per the above
Success.
Edit: useful tool
Right, but say your backup takes 4 hours, and you have 8. WOuld you ever pay for it to be "faster", and for what/why?
well... as per the above, if I thought that 1/2 my time window was acceptable, then no. If 1/2 my time window was unacceptably slow, then yes.
Except if half the time window was acceptable, then that wasn't the time window. THe window itself tells you what is acceptable.
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@MattSpeller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
WOuld you ever pay for it to be "faster", and for what/why?
Hell yes there are times when it matters a lot. I used to work for a manufacturing company that only had a 4h gap between shifts. Needless to say there was some serious urgency to slam backups through the network.
But then the windows was different.
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@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@MattSpeller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@MattSpeller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
Quantity of data to backup
Time slot (in hours) backups require
Add in "wiggle room" as you see fit (ie, backup done in 2/3 of the timeslot to allow for growth / dumb shit)
Select appropriate backup flavor combination as per the above
Success.
Edit: useful tool
Right, but say your backup takes 4 hours, and you have 8. WOuld you ever pay for it to be "faster", and for what/why?
well... as per the above, if I thought that 1/2 my time window was acceptable, then no. If 1/2 my time window was unacceptably slow, then yes.
Except if half the time window was acceptable, then that wasn't the time window. THe window itself tells you what is acceptable.
Right, it is what it is.
And as you always say, never buy for the future.
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@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
All comes down to your speed needs. Is the extra $100 a good price for the extra speed? What does the extra speed mean to your business?
I comes down to what you are backing up, and as you said, the needs of the business.
If you are backing up a lot of data, and it goes too slow, the run time may leak into business hours, and it'll put some burden on your network and productions servers, slowing it down and causing a mess for the users who need to work. It could also delay "domino effect" backups, causing too many to happen at once, or for backups to be skipped entirely... but that depends on the backup software too.
On the other hand, if you are backing up something that requires a lot of retention, snapshots, frequency, etc... you'll need to have available space for that, and also I can see how speed fits in.
It's always going to depend heavily on the businesses needs, and it will be very different from place to place. Some larger businesses may have lighter requirements than a much smaller one.
If the extra speed of the backup process has no effect at all on the business, then is it really worth the extra money? If the extra speed will have actual positive impact on the business, then it may be worth it.
You also need to consider future growth, at least near-future growth. And, what happens if you fill it up?
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So @BRRABill did you get your answer from this post?
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@Dashrender said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
So @BRRABill did you get your answer from this post?
Yes, go with as slow as your business supports.
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OK so this thread has covered the backup window - what about the recovery window?
Sure you have 8 hours to backup, but is your company OK with 8+ hours for recovery?
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@Dashrender said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
OK so this thread has covered the backup window - what about the recovery window?
Sure you have 8 hours to backup, but is your company OK with 8+ hours for recovery?
Excellent point. Recovery time is more important than backup time imho.
It can help a lot to plan backups by starting with recovery.
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@Tim_G said
It can help a lot to plan backups by starting with recovery.
Right, and this has been discussed here many times in that if you have important data, it probably shouldn't be taking 8 hours to restore it all.
Perhaps a full restore is not the optimal way to restore in the case of a major issue.
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@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@Tim_G said
It can help a lot to plan backups by starting with recovery.
Right, and this has been discussed here many times in that if you have important data, it probably shouldn't be taking 8 hours to restore it all.
Perhaps a full restore is not the optimal way to restore in the case of a major issue.
if you loose a all your storage you might not have any choice. We are talking about worst case here.
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@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@Tim_G said
It can help a lot to plan backups by starting with recovery.
Right, and this has been discussed here many times in that if you have important data, it probably shouldn't be taking 8 hours to restore it all.
Perhaps a full restore is not the optimal way to restore in the case of a major issue.
Importance of the data doesn't determine time to restore,normally, but the importance of downtime. VERY different things.
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@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@Tim_G said
It can help a lot to plan backups by starting with recovery.
Right, and this has been discussed here many times in that if you have important data, it probably shouldn't be taking 8 hours to restore it all.
Perhaps a full restore is not the optimal way to restore in the case of a major issue.
Importance of the data doesn't determine time to restore,normally, but the importance of downtime. VERY different things.
My point being that if there are a few files or an application that NEEDS restoring ASAP, perhaps that should be part of the plan versus pegging 8 hours for a full backup.
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@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@Tim_G said
It can help a lot to plan backups by starting with recovery.
Right, and this has been discussed here many times in that if you have important data, it probably shouldn't be taking 8 hours to restore it all.
Perhaps a full restore is not the optimal way to restore in the case of a major issue.
Importance of the data doesn't determine time to restore,normally, but the importance of downtime. VERY different things.
My point being that if there are a few files or an application that NEEDS restoring ASAP, perhaps that should be part of the plan versus pegging 8 hours for a full backup.
Sure I suppose I can see what you're saying,
So let's say you know what files you need first, you loose the whole server, so you restore those few files first before kicking off the full restore, during which you often have to wait until it's completed before accessing most if not all of that data.
Definitely not an option when restoring an application system either.
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@Dashrender said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@Tim_G said
It can help a lot to plan backups by starting with recovery.
Right, and this has been discussed here many times in that if you have important data, it probably shouldn't be taking 8 hours to restore it all.
Perhaps a full restore is not the optimal way to restore in the case of a major issue.
Importance of the data doesn't determine time to restore,normally, but the importance of downtime. VERY different things.
My point being that if there are a few files or an application that NEEDS restoring ASAP, perhaps that should be part of the plan versus pegging 8 hours for a full backup.
Sure I suppose I can see what you're saying,
So let's say you know what files you need first, you loose the whole server, so you restore those few files first before kicking off the full restore, during which you often have to wait until it's completed before accessing most if not all of that data.
Definitely not an option when restoring an application system either.
Application system doesn't even need to be restored from backup, it can be built fresh.
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@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@Dashrender said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@Tim_G said
It can help a lot to plan backups by starting with recovery.
Right, and this has been discussed here many times in that if you have important data, it probably shouldn't be taking 8 hours to restore it all.
Perhaps a full restore is not the optimal way to restore in the case of a major issue.
Importance of the data doesn't determine time to restore,normally, but the importance of downtime. VERY different things.
My point being that if there are a few files or an application that NEEDS restoring ASAP, perhaps that should be part of the plan versus pegging 8 hours for a full backup.
Sure I suppose I can see what you're saying,
So let's say you know what files you need first, you loose the whole server, so you restore those few files first before kicking off the full restore, during which you often have to wait until it's completed before accessing most if not all of that data.
Definitely not an option when restoring an application system either.
Application system doesn't even need to be restored from backup, it can be built fresh.
The application data needs to be restored and that might be the bulk of what's actually being restored and takes a ton of time
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@Dashrender said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@Dashrender said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@Tim_G said
It can help a lot to plan backups by starting with recovery.
Right, and this has been discussed here many times in that if you have important data, it probably shouldn't be taking 8 hours to restore it all.
Perhaps a full restore is not the optimal way to restore in the case of a major issue.
Importance of the data doesn't determine time to restore,normally, but the importance of downtime. VERY different things.
My point being that if there are a few files or an application that NEEDS restoring ASAP, perhaps that should be part of the plan versus pegging 8 hours for a full backup.
Sure I suppose I can see what you're saying,
So let's say you know what files you need first, you loose the whole server, so you restore those few files first before kicking off the full restore, during which you often have to wait until it's completed before accessing most if not all of that data.
Definitely not an option when restoring an application system either.
Application system doesn't even need to be restored from backup, it can be built fresh.
The application data needs to be restored and that might be the bulk of what's actually being restored and takes a ton of time
Application "data" isn't in the application, it's in the database. That's part of the database restore, not the application restore.
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@Dashrender said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@Dashrender said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@scottalanmiller said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@Tim_G said
It can help a lot to plan backups by starting with recovery.
Right, and this has been discussed here many times in that if you have important data, it probably shouldn't be taking 8 hours to restore it all.
Perhaps a full restore is not the optimal way to restore in the case of a major issue.
Importance of the data doesn't determine time to restore,normally, but the importance of downtime. VERY different things.
My point being that if there are a few files or an application that NEEDS restoring ASAP, perhaps that should be part of the plan versus pegging 8 hours for a full backup.
Sure I suppose I can see what you're saying,
So let's say you know what files you need first, you loose the whole server, so you restore those few files first before kicking off the full restore, during which you often have to wait until it's completed before accessing most if not all of that data.
Definitely not an option when restoring an application system either.
Application system doesn't even need to be restored from backup, it can be built fresh.
The application data needs to be restored and that might be the bulk of what's actually being restored and takes a ton of time
This is why I use VMs, and separate the os, data, and application on different virtual disks if possible. In SQL cases, you will by default to follow best practices... Database, logs, etc on different .vhdx's, maybe on different tiers of storage, ssd vs hdd.
OS takes minutes, applications take minutes, then comes the data however you like it.
Typically those kinds of restores are relatively quick. Its usually file server data in SMBs that take forever to restore. Most SMB databases are less than 100 GB. But if the need comes to restore a 10 TB file store because the whole thing blew up, sure that will take a long time unless you have it replicated onsite or can spin it up in the cloud.
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@Tim_G
RIght, that is kind of my point.
It's not feasible for me as a SOHO/SMB, but for many it might be.
A lot of times teeny companies think they need to be up 24/7 without downtime without realizing the cost.
If there are mission critical applications, perhaps they need live replication, or something such as that.
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@BRRABill said in Backups - how much does backup performance matter to you?:
@Tim_G
RIght, that is kind of my point.
It's not feasible for me as a SOHO/SMB, but for many it might be.
A lot of times teeny companies think they need to be up 24/7 without downtime without realizing the cost.
If there are mission critical applications, perhaps they need live replication, or something such as that.
Still can work well for an SMB, a lot of those things, like separating applications from databases, can be free. Not necessarily a scale thing, can just be a better approach.
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It all depends on the RTO you need to hit. But to the points being made here, the RTO may be different depending on the applications in your environment. Maybe the ERP system and its SQL database are all that need to come back within 1 hour of going down but the file server's RTO could be closer to 2 or 3 hours.
We talk about RTO and RPO, but I bet you in most places those are not clearly defined down to the VM / application level. If they are and you've planned accordingly, bravo.
