Shorten backup windows

By reducing the amount of time it takes to complete your backups, you can also reduce the amount of time your system is unavailable.

A key consideration of any backup strategy is determining your backup window, which is the amount of time that your system can be unavailable to users while you perform your backup operations. The challenge is to back everything up in the window of time that you have. To lessen the impact the backup window has on availability, you can reduce the amount of time a backup takes using one or more of the following techniques.

Improved tape technologies

Faster and denser tape technologies can reduce the total backup time. See Storage Solutions for more information.

Parallel saves

Using multiple tape devices concurrently can reduce backup time by effectively multiplying the performance of a single device. See Save to multiple devices to reduce your save window for more details on reducing your backup window.

Saving to non-removable media

Saving to media that is faster than removable media, for example directly to a disk unit, can reduce the backup window. Data can be migrated to removable media at a later time. See Save to virtual tape media for more information.

Perform online backups
You can reduce your backup window by saving objects while they are still in use on the system or by conducting online backups.
Backup from a second copy
Several techniques can be implemented to reduce the backup window by conducting backups from a second copy of the data.
Back up less data
You can reduce planned outages by backing up smaller amounts of data at different times. There are several ways that you can isolate the data on your system for this type of operation.

Parent topic: Shorten planned outages