Rainer Tammer wrote:

I see a very big problem in this disk storage pools.

If you have an surge on your electricity network you
can potentially loos all your data including the backup !!

That is why the industry has developed UPS, RAID and auto-retracting
disk heads among other things.

And there is nothing that says you can't take an offline backup to tape
for offsite storage in addition to the much faster diskpool for backup
and restore.

We are currently using a Hitachi SAN to do a snapshot image, which we
then detach and backup up (albeit to a tape pool).

There is no technical or marketing reason that I can see that IBM could
not, or should not, develop a combined diskpool/tapepool solution, using
disk for primary backup and restoration, and the backend tapepool for
offsite storage. (Other than possible backlash from the sales and
marketing force for IBM tape library solutions? Lou Gerstner established
the principle that IBM should speak with one voice; unfortunately it is
not always clear whose voice it is that is, or should be, speaking.)

A highend alternative would be to use a distributed diskpool solution
for offsite copies.

Dan Goodman
Systems Engineer Specialist
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital