We'll soon have an EMC Celerra 8530, Connectrix fibre switch and Symmetrix
fibre-SAN in our NT environment.  This 'super-fileserver' is projected to
replace several hundred existing legacy NT fileservers.  The purchase has
been made.  Deployment is projected approx 2 months out and phased ports
of legacy server filesystems will commence shortly after that - but the
backup strategy and solution for it is still being spec'd.

The basic building blocks of the Symmetrix SAN will be 181GB disks (3-4 TB
of them initially).  The Celerra will have 10 Data-Movers initially.  EMC
was recently on-site to present all the good news about the Celerra.  For
backups and DR issues specifically, I'd also like to hear the people's
side of the story:
   - Who out there is backing up one of these, and how?
   - How well does your backup solution work (for backups, also for
restores) ?
   - How reliable is EMC hardware, service & tech support ?  Have you
experienced any
     downtime attributable to EMC hardware failures, service or
tech-support problems?
   - Are there any configuration or backup strategy pitfalls that we must
avoid to ensure
     successful daily backups?

-rsvp, thanks
Kent Monthei
Kent Monthei
GlaxoSmithKline