[geeks] SAN Question...

[Bjorn Ramqvist]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> Please excuse the ignorance, but I have a question about SAN and
> backups - what do people do to back these up?

Veritas Netbackup, to SuperDLT tapes.

> My company is thinking about getting two SANs, putting them next to
> each other and backing one up to the other (after dividing the workload
> across them, so that SAN_A has the primary copy of partition_a and a
> backup of partition_b, while SAN_B has the reverse)... Is this what
> people do?

That sounds like... expensive?

> As a random thought, has anyone backed up on SAN device to a similar
> SAN device at a remote location (say an off-site data center)? If so,
> how were they connected?

We have one SAN with about 1.6TB of data, connected to the main net
coreswitch with Gigabit Ethernet. Our backup server (with Netbackup) has
one 450GB array for archived data, and a SDLT-library connected via a
small SAN to a remote location. That way we have both the migrated
files, and the backups, at a remote location while the backupserver is
still in the computer room.

> Thanks in advance, I'm reviewing a plan for our office
> network/infrastructure and I am not certain about this technology
> (never worked with it)...

Nothing special, just fiber and expensive gear.

/Bjorn