Serverless backup is probably what you would call the holy grail of the
SAN backup world. It's what Legato were aiming at a while ago with
Celestra. Now I'm no expert at this, all I've done is the stuff about
connecting tapes to storage nodes via a SAN, and that's complicated
enough, but the way I understand it the concept is that you have a
"data-mover" server that handles the traffic between a client and a tape
drive. Better than this, the data-mover becomes integrated with the tape
drive as the hardware develops, and you end up with serverless backup. I
don't believe we've quite got there yet.

I don't know what happened to Celestra. At one time it was the best
thing since Babbage's Analytical Engine, now it seems to have all gone
quiet.

Craig Ruefenacht wrote:

Hi,

Last week I posted a question about serverless backups, but I'm unsure
whether or not I was asking the right question.  I've done some more
research and have tried to get some info from our Legato reseller, but
haven't been able to get a clear answer.

Here is what we want to do:  We have a EMC Symmetrix SAN and several hosts,
all connected via fiber fabric.  We also have a SpectraLogic 64000 with both
SCSI and fiber QIPs.  We are currently only using the SCSI QIPs, which are
connected to our Networker server (HP-UX 11i, Networker 6.1.3) via
traditional SCSI cables, et al.  Instead of having the data flowing from the
Symmetrix to the client host (over SAN fabric), then from the client host to
the Networker server (over the LAN), and then from the Networker server
through a SCSI cable to the jukebox, is it possible to get the data to flow
directly from the EMC Symmetrix to the tape library (bypassing all machines
in the process), assuming that the tape library is placed on the SAN fabric?

Most of the data we backup is Oracle databases (but not all).  We currently
split off mirrors of our Oracle databases while they are in hotbackup mode,
and then we backup the BCV volumes (which we mount on a different client
than where the live database exists).  This method still involves the data
flowing from a client machine to the server machine and then to the tape
library.  We want to remove the UNIX machines from the data flow.

Is this possible, and if so, can it be done with any data or does it require
specific modules written for specific apps (like Oracle).

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