On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Bobby Williams wrote:

> You can't do it with master servers, but you can with media servers.
>
> Assuming that you have the band width on an environment with fiber to
> multiple sites.
Arg, looking to have 3 separate environments ideally..

>
> You could expand on this, but I am going to only work with 2 sites.
>
> This works in a 5.X environment.
>
> Site A  has production data
> Site B  has Dev/QA data and is the Alternate site.
>
> Assume that each has SAN attached tape drives and A SAN can be zoned to B
> SAN devices and the tape devices are in either a stand alone robot or a
> robot that can be partitioned.
Arg again!  No SAN/fiber switches here, direct-attached (hence why the 
master-server is what I am looking at).

>
> At site A, employ a Media server (call it media-dual) that is controlled by
> the master at Site B.  The media server should have multiple NIC's so that
> it can communicate with the master at Site B and also communicate with the
> clients at site A.
I thought of this as well, but for other reasons, having a master control 
its own site actually turned out to be the best and having the clients 
from the other backup to it (aka cross-site)

>
> For critical information, back up the info with the master-B via media-dual.
> Back it up to the drives at site A in case you need to do a restore or
> create a dssu at site A for these backups.  Duplicate or de-stage the
> backups from media-dual to drives configured at site B.
Yeah I can kind of see this working..

>
> If site A goes away, you have the backups of the critical data (say the
> systems with an RPO of 1-4 hours) at Site B and just start restoring to the
> alternate site recovery system (because the Site B master did the backup).
> You would have to restore with the force restore option.  If you used a DSSU
> for the backup, you would have to promote the secondary copy to the primary
> copy (this dings me every time).  If you are duplicating tapes from A-B,
> then promote the copy during duplication or wait until you need a DR
> restore.
Understood..

>
> A client initiated restore of this data may not be possible depending on
> whether or not your networks are linked.  A master server does not have to
> communicate with a client.  Only the media server has to communicate with a
> client.  However, bplist or bp from the client is not possible unless the
> client can communicate with the master.
Yes.

A lot of this though stems from the fact I cannot do what I really want to 
do, it is almost if the _real_ work around is just have the client backup 
the data twice (if you wanted to be protected from a dual-site failure?)

clientA -> site B
clientB -> site C

Justin.

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