On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 12:27:33PM -0500, Jack Forester, Jr. wrote:
> We're soon going to be introducing some EMC Symmetric hardware into our 
> enviromnent, and I'm going to have to get those things backed up.  We 
> could continue to use our host-based backups, but I believe there are 
> now other options available.

The Symmetrix is simply a disk controller.  A very expensive one, but
still a disk controller.  If you want to be able to do a file restore,
then you'll need to do file-based backups.  

The Symm does offer things like BCVs and you can script NetBackup to
split and establish them, but you still have the problem of backing up
those BCVs (which are essentially unprotected mirror volumes).

What other options you have depends on what operating systems will be
accessing the Symm and what applications you'll be running.

Whenever you ask the question of what method you want to use to back
something up, you're really asking the wrong question.  The first
question to ask yourself is what kind of restores you're going to
require.  You didn't really buy a backup system - you bought a
restoration preparation system.

-- 
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org