Hi Dan,

> > 4.  We recently had a vendor to remain nameless that tried 
> >     to suggest a NAS solution.  (crap)  It would entail
> >     putting some disks, a NAS device, either in the remote
> >     locations or the central site or both and using that to
> >     backup the sites.  But the problems are that the NAS
> >     appliances would be twice as expensive as the NT servers,
> >     and we still have the network bandwidth issues.
> 
> Unfortunately not every vendor is capable of making a logical 
> choice for your environment.  :(  And some just don't care except
> for their own bottom line.

        Not sure if it was NetApp that made the suggestion, but
        it wouldn't surprise me if it it was since we are seeing
        this issue raised by other companies. To that end we
        have a paper on some of the solutions that NetApp has
        applied to the problem at:

http://www.netapp.com/solutions/data_protection_wp.html

        With the release (on Friday) of Data ONTAP 6.2 you can use
        a NearStore R100 instead of a filer at the center and use
        SnapVault software to perform the remote (disk 2 disk)
        backups and then centrally protect to tape via NDMP. Similar
        to rsync we only send over changed blocks on incrementals.

        For more information on SnapVault check out:

http://www.netapp.com/products/filer/snapvault.html

Cheers,
        Grant

For information on NetApp's Data Protection Solutions view
http://www.netapp.com/solutions/data_protection.html.

=========== grant AT netapp DOT com  ========== Grant Melvin
===                                  === Software Development Manager 
===                                  === Data Availability & Management
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=========== Network Appliance ========== Fax:(408)822-4578