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Tape Library configuration design

C
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Hi Vaulters,

 

As per our customer concern, they have a Tape Library, which they want to use with a new MA that will be deployed, the main thing is that they hesitate which is the best way to deploy the MA (Virtual or Physical). The main points are as follows :

  • Virtual : Easy deployment, HA provided by VMware Layer, but complex configuration with the Tape Library.
  • Physical : Easier to deploy with the Tape Library since it can be directly attached, but no HA.

Does anyone already faced this situation ? And what’s the recommended infra for the MA ? Even when it comes to performance.

 

Regards.

Best answer by Collin Harper

Hello @Commvault Engineer 

Commvault is agnostic to whether the MediaAgent is physical or virtual. It all depends on what the customer wants to implement.

If you are concerned about High Availability, if something happens to the MediaAgent, whether physical or virtual, it cannot be used until it is repaired. You can have multiple MediaAgents configured to use the tape library so in the event something happens with one MediaAgent, another can load balance the work.

 

Thank you,
Collin

 

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6 replies

C
Vaulter
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  • Collin HarperVaulter
  • Vaulter
  • 490 replies
  • Answer
  • October 23, 2023

Hello @Commvault Engineer 

Commvault is agnostic to whether the MediaAgent is physical or virtual. It all depends on what the customer wants to implement.

If you are concerned about High Availability, if something happens to the MediaAgent, whether physical or virtual, it cannot be used until it is repaired. You can have multiple MediaAgents configured to use the tape library so in the event something happens with one MediaAgent, another can load balance the work.

 

Thank you,
Collin

 

C
1 person likes this
  • C
    Commvault Engineer
C
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Collin Harper wrote:

Hello @Commvault Engineer 

Commvault is agnostic to whether the MediaAgent is physical or virtual. It all depends on what the customer wants to implement.

If you are concerned about High Availability, if something happens to the MediaAgent, whether physical or virtual, it cannot be used until it is repaired. You can have multiple MediaAgents configured to use the tape library so in the event something happens with one MediaAgent, another can load balance the work.

 

Thank you,
Collin

 

Thanks, Collin, for your usual support.

I had one more question regarding Tape Library integration with Commvault. The main purpose of using the Tape Library is for Secondary Copies. Since primary copies data will be saved on their backup disk library and want to create a secondary copy on the tape library for longer retention.

 

Our concern is that the primary copy will be hosted on deduped storage pool, does deduplication cause any issue with secondary copies with Tapes ? We read somewhere that dedup is not supported for Tapes, maybe that's the case only for primary copies on Tapes.

 

Regards.

 

L
Vaulter
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  • LedoespVaulter
  • Vaulter
  • 249 replies
  • October 23, 2023

CommVault will read from the disk storage rehydrating the data to copy the backup jobs to the tape media.

You are right, you can no use deduplication if your backup target in the primary copy is tape media but here you have disk storage 

C
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  • C
    Commvault Engineer
S
Vaulter
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  • SMDVaulter
  • Vaulter
  • 125 replies
  • October 24, 2023

in case you are wondering what is “ rehydrating “ , it it simply the conversation from dedup to non-dedup data. 

 

You can have the secondary copy configured without deduplication irrespective of the storage (Disk, tape,cloud) , data will always gets rehydrated and stored in the secondary copy in form of non-dedup data

C
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  • C
    Commvault Engineer
C
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Thanks a lot @SMD and @Ledoesp.

 

If I’m understanding right, basically, we’re going to configure our primary copy to Disk with dedup and secondary copy to tape as source the primary copy and CommVault will automatically rebuild “rehydrating” the data from the source copy which is deduped as a non-deduped data to be stored on the tape library.

 

Kind regards.

S
Vaulter
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  • SMDVaulter
  • Vaulter
  • 125 replies
  • October 24, 2023

Yes, that is correct.

C
1 person likes this
  • C
    Commvault Engineer

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