We have considered and are still considering both of these
possibilities.  The problem with licensing them as SAN media servers is
that we must purchase Netbackup SAN Media server licenses at the highest
tier level (for the 15k) and we introduce another level of complexity to
Netbackup maintenance.  Instead of merely having to find a window to
make changes in the backup system, we would now need to find a window
which would accommodate both the backup system and the host system.  As
backups generally run when the system is not running, this becomes very
difficult.  

Snapshots are a possibility, but this doesn't address restore speeds.
We are still limited on restores to the speed of the network device
(when restoring to the original host).  Additionally, since we have
Clariion arrays on the back end, there is no integration available with
Netbackup.  We have tried some homegrown scripting, but that isn't
something we want to be responsible for supporting.

Matthew Dobbertien
Sr. Systems Analyst
Chicago Tribune

-----Original Message-----
From: blaine_robison AT netzero DOT com [mailto:blaine_robison AT netzero DOT 
com] 
Sent: Friday, January 28, 2005 11:36 AM
To: Dobbertien, Matthew
Cc: dmagda AT ee.ryerson DOT ca; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] backing up LARGE oracle databases (looking for
sugges tions)


Have you considered SAN media servers running multiple channels to the
tape drives. There is a white paper from Oracle describing the
configuration. I am not sure how Sun Cluster would play in to this
system. 
http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/availability/pdf/rman_perfromanc
e_SCBC_wp.pdf

Another approach may be to create BCV's (EMC) or Shadow Images (Hitachi)
and detach then mount direct to your media servers. 




Blaine Robison
Solaris Certified System Administrator
Solaris Certified Network Administrator 
Sun Certified Backup and Recovery Engineer
Veritas Certified Professional Data Recovery