Just curious about the system architecture used in your environments to support backup. In my data center, my LTO drives are attached directly to the production SAN fabric. What I'd like to do is create a separate fabric using two MDS switches which are available to me and move the tape drives to this new fabric. I intend to install the switches in the same rack with the library and backup server so cabling will be simplified and I can free ports up on the production SAN. My backup server has four FC initiator ports, two for disk and two for tape so I'll attach the FC initiators intended for tape to the new fabric along with the tape drives.

My reasoning is that it makes sense to move backup related traffic away from production networks where possible for both FC and ethernet. It also exposed the production SAN to less risk when changes are made to backup systems related zones etc.

Just looking for comments on pros and cons and any gotchas to be aware of for the separate backup fabric.

Thanks,

Vic

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