Just curious. You said "I'm not a fan of VTL," and so therefore aren't
looking at the VTL vendors at all. That kind of leaves out a whole
segment of the market, doesn't it? I'm aware of Data Domain, Exagrid,
NEC & NetApp NAS-based de-dupe products, but I can't imagine not also
bringing Diligent, Falconstor, Quantum & SEPATON to the table just
because their interface is (currently) virtual tape. I would bring them
all to the table and make them tell me why I should go their direction,
be it virtual tape or NAS.
In addition, depending on how things are configured and what
software/version we're talking about, I'd much rather back up to a VTL
than a NAS head.
---
W. Curtis Preston
Backup Blog @ www.backupcentral.com
VP Data Protection, GlassHouse Technologies
-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Wayne T
Smith
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 10:38 AM
To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Tapeless backup environments?
Yes, we are in the middle of this (trying to replace D2T2T with D2D2D)
process now.
What I am seeing is that while disk media costs more than tape per TB,
de-duplication is the difference-maker, the enabler, making extra weeks
or months retention of D2D data inexpensive. Buy another appliance for
off-site replication, and only changes, not full backups, are
essentially moved between sites, causing much lower volume of
transmission. Kind of like running an "rsync" after previously
"rsync"ing. Good news that all vendors I've seriously looked at make
this automatic and great news is that one might expect NetBackup will be
able to see and use the replicated site directly (soon).
I'm not a fan of VTL, so we are not looking at VTL. Your situation may
vary.
Disk-to-disk backup planning is not a simple exercise, however, as
features, operations and even terminology varies substantially from
vendor to vendor.
The state of the art does seem much more mature than even a couple of
years ago. All vendors we're seriously looking at know their competition
and will make very substantial discounting from "list" prices. Proper
sizing has been a chore, as each vendor tries to minimize the cost of
their proposal.
Although we have not made final decisions, I find the "Data Domain"
backup appliance offerings superb (though we have not yet had an on-site
trial).
On the other hand, we have a lot of NetApp primary disk, and so the
NetApp backup offerings are interesting for their support/use of
snapshots and integration with NetBackup ($$$ features on both NetApp
and Symantec sides). Technically speaking, though, NetApp NearStore used
as a simple disk backup appliance does not appear to stack up to the
Data Domain offerings.
Which solution is best for us has yet to be determined for my
approximately 10TB site.
All of the D2D2D solutions we've studied and have been proposed to us
would entail significantly more capital outlay than simply adding some
staging disk and getting more modern tape drives for our L700, but the
performance, scalability and automation levels of D2D2D are very
exciting.
Hope this helps! (please do post your experiences)
cheers, wayne
Jeff Lightner wrote, in part, on 2007-09-21 9:43 AM:
>
> Yesterday our director said that he doesn't intend to ever upgrade
> existing STK L700 because eventually we'll go tapeless as that is what
> the industry is doing. The idea being we'd have our disk backup
> devices here (e.g. Data Domain) and transfer to offsite storage to
> another disk device so as to eliminate the need for ever transporting
> tapes.
>
> It made me wonder if anyone was actually doing the above already or
> was planning to do so?
>
_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
_______________________________________________
Veritas-bu maillist - Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
|
