Backup over network question

[Auger282]

We currently have multi servers... 3 have their own tape drives 2xdlt 1xlto one is our file server... we have smaller servers tossing their files on the file server so its all caught on the one tape

we are looking at consolidating onto one auto loader drive but it only has one scsi connection and a nic. So it would mean our file server would be the only one able to direct connect to the box....

has anyone had any problems with backing up over the network to a tape box? .. we were looking to maybe do a vlan but with my understanding that would mean we would have to get secondary nics on each box to keep the chatter down on the whole network...

any input is greatly appreciated!

 

[fs483]

We currently use remote agents for our smaller servers and it works very well. These servers have little data. Backup exec also supports backing up through a secondary nic. I believe you can install a second nic and tell backup exec to send the data through this second nic to avoid congesting your main network. We are actually in the process of a similar setup. We got the auto-loader with LTO tapes, a server and everything. Just waiting for the SAN to arrive. Everything is sitting on the floor for now.

 

[LWComputingMVP]

There are several methods of backup, but in circumstances where you have a tape drive, typically, there's only one or two systems with the tape drive and that/those system(s) backup the others. In SOME cases, people use D2D2T which is Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape where all systems backup to one central server which then backs up to tape. This tends to keep performance on the production servers at better levels.

 

[Santei]

Lwcomputing made valuable post and i totally agree with him. The only thing to add is backup software.
along backup exec (akwong offer) u may have look at Acronis True Image Enterprise server (

http://www.acronis.com/),

We use it for our server.