My server needs more space!

September 4, 2009 12:08 PM

One of my servers needs more space, but due to several reasons I can't add space directly to the server...

I have a server that I use for backup and restore. When doing a restore BackupExec uses the local hard drive to store the data while it is being read off of tape.

I have a giant restore that is using all of the space on the drive in the machine. I can't add another physical drive because the server is in a blade center and the blade only has one hard drive slot. (I might be able to use an external hard drive, but because of the way the Blade Center shares USB ports none of the other blades would be able to use USB.)

So, some of the other servers on the network have extra drive space, but BackupExec will not restore to a mapped network drive. I've also tried making symbolic links directly to the other servers on the network using Junction, MkLink, Junction LinkMagic, and several other tools. I've also tried mapping a network drive then making symbolic links to the folders on the network drive.

Does anyone have suggestions about how to trick BackupExec into writing to a drive that is not physically attached to the backup server?

posted by gregr to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Can you use iscsi? BackupExec appears to support it...
posted by iamabot at 12:15 PM on September 4

seconding iSCSI. If you don't know anything about it, setting the target might be tricky.

But the storage mounts as a local drive, and you can format and use it as such. The initiator in Windows is pretty top notch. OSX doesnt have one, but there are some third party one available.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:20 PM on September 4

I don't have any iscsi hardware. I have a couple of fiber channel sans, but the space on them is already carved out for other uses.

Do you know of some software that I can install to make another server an iscsi target (preferably free/cheap)?
posted by gregr at 12:24 PM on September 4

Openfiler looks like a nice free iSCSI/NAS solution that might fit the bill. If you don't care about the speed, you could run it in a VM and get some extra space that way - they have some premade VMs available for download.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:26 PM on September 4

Also, you dont need any special hardware for iSCSI - it will run fine over ethernet. That said, you will want to segregate the traffic onto it's own network for maximum bandwidth and security.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 12:28 PM on September 4

I used iSCSI Cake in a test once, it seemed to work fairly well.
posted by odinsdream at 12:42 PM on September 4

I've built a Centos5 box on random hardware as an iSCSI target -- not overly difficult, and there are howto's available.

A quick google also suggests that BExec should be able to restore directly over the network to a share, except specifically not to a mapped network drive. This matches my recollection -- have you tried restoring directly to the share?
posted by coriolisdave at 3:43 PM on September 6