HP StorageWorks File Migration Agent V2.1 administrator guide (T4274-96105, October 2006)

126 Best practices
Windows 2000:
Windows 2003:
NOTE: For further information about the AT or SCHTasks command-line utility, see the documentation for
Microsoft Windows.
Backup/restore concept for FMA managed volumes
FMA is a hierarchical storage management (HSM) solution and, therefore, no replacement for data
backup. The major purpose for backup is to ensure recovery of data on the server if a disaster occurs. The
main goal of HSM is to better manage data storage costs.
FMA migrates files to other forms of storage and creates copies of files, but does not back up files on the
server. When FMA releases files, only stubs are left on the managed file system, which point FMA to the
exact location in the backend storage, enabling file retrieval and user access.
To provide data protection, third-party backup applications are absolutely essential for disaster recovery.
The qualified third-party backup applications (see ”Backup/restore” on page 142) are HSM-aware, which
means that stubfiles are backed up without causing recalls from backend storage. Because FMA stubfiles
are created as Windows sparse files, a further requirement for backup applications is the appropriate
processing of sparse files to avoid heavy network traffic and to minimize the backup window.
There are two concepts for organizing the back up of FMA managed volumes.
The first one is to protect all data on the server. To accomplish this, the backup process needs to be set up
to the “incremental forever” mode and the release of FMA jobs needs to be scheduled after the backup
process to ensure that files are backed up before becoming a stubfile. In this case it is most likely that the
capacity of the saved data will exceed the capacity of the original locations on the managed volumes.
Therefore release operations will be triggered during a disaster recovery or massive restore of saved data.
It is recommended to adjust the monitoring time interval (for example, 10 minutes) and watermarks
accordingly.
Concept two is ideal when fast backup/restore processing is of primary importance. In this scenario, data
backup needs to be configured to periodically run full backups with subsequent incremental backups. This
approach reduces the backup data volume and backup/restore time period compared to a non-HSM
managed filesystem with the same data capacity and number of files.
CAUTION: When backing up stubfiles, it is very important that FMA’s cleanup expiration time must be set
equal to the expiration time that is configured for the backed up files. The FMA cleanup function removes
the archive copies of deleted files depending on the specified cleanup expiration time. In this context, the
expiration time, which is specified for the backend storage, also needs to be configured appropriately.
FMA does not support multiple references to one archive file copy. Only one stubfile can be linked to one
archive copy. As a result of this restriction, restore operations of files to an alternate location are not
permitted by FMA. Backed up files from FMA managed volumes can only be restored to their original
location.
Relocating data to another FMA managed volume
Prerequisites
Copying data to another FMA managed volume needs to be executed by the robocopy.exe
command-line tool, which is available from Microsoft’s Resource Kit.
at 03:00 /every:Su "C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\HP FMA\jobs\MyJob.cmd"
schtasks /create /ST 03:00 /D Su /TN "C:\Progr..\MyJob.cmd"