I want to thank everyone who took the time to reply.  We were looking at 
offloading the backups to another server and started looking at the 
ServerFree Agent manual.  Knowing how others are performing their 
backups of one of these beasts is useful as we move into this new territory.

Ed Wilts wrote:
> 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.
> 


-- 
Jack L. Forester, Jr.
UNIX Systems Administrator, Stf
Lockheed Martin Information Technology
(304) 625-3946