What Are The Alternatives; Physical Tape; Nas; Application-Based Disk Backup - HP StorageWorks 12000 - Virtual Library System EVA Gateway Manual

restore performance. The addition of a D2D device to these environments allows de-multiplexing of
the backups so that restore performance is improved, the deduplication allows for a longer retention
time on disk without needing significantly higher disk capacities, and the deduplication-enabled
replication allows cost-effective off-site copying of the backups for disaster protection.

What are the Alternatives?

Alternatives to virtual tape solutions include:

• Physical Tape

• NAS

(network attached storage)

• Application-based Disk Backup

• Business Copy
Physical Tape
Tape is the foundation for data protection and should be a part of most data protection solutions
(except those with highly perishable data). Consider a direct-to-tape scheme if:
• You are doing large image backups (i.e., databases), or
• Your servers can stream the tape drives.
and
• You do not need fast single file restore, or
• Your current backup window is not strained.
NAS
An alternative to a virtual library is a NAS device acting as a backup target (via NFS or CIFS network
file system protocols). However, this protocol has significant performance and scaling limitations;
writing backups over TCP/IP and NFS/CIFS to the NAS target uses much more CPU on the backup
infrastructure compared to Fibre Channel SAN. In addition, a NAS mount point does not scale to the
size of an enterprise virtual tape library. For example, a VLS can present a single virtual library target
containing multiple petabytes of tape capacity with all backup jobs configured to use the one common
shared high-performance high-capacity VLS backup device.
Consider a NAS target if you:
• Do not have high performance requirements.
• Do not want to run SAN backups.
• Do not need the backup target to significantly scale capacity or performance.
• Want to run Data Protector "virtual full backups."
Application-based Disk Backup
Utilizing the file library functionality of backup applications is good for small or isolated jobs. When
a large-scale implementation is required, virtual tape offers a more easily managed, higher performing
solution. Consider a file library system if:
• The application is in a LAN or LAN/SAN hybrid configuration.
• Fewer than four servers write data to secondary disk storage.
• You can redeploy existing arrays as secondary disk storage.
• Your environment is static.
18 Concepts
(disk to disk, backup to disk, disk to disk to tape)
(snapshot and clone solutions)