Page 2 of 12 Why Choose Native Fibre Channel Backup? July 2001 Where we are today When asked to name the most important factor affecting today’s business computing decisions, IS professionals have an immediate reply:   explosive data growth.  Businesses are scrambling for computing solutions that can manage extreme data loads with unprecedented speed and accuracy.  With our increasing reliance on such applications as internet commerce, enterprise resource planning, and on-line transaction processing, the requirements are clear: Data must be available cross-platform, cross-application, without delay, and without error. To meet these requirements, Fibre Channel storage area networks (SANs) have emerged as the top solution for delivering data.  Fibre Channel is a standard for information delivery that enables large data transfers at very high speeds with minimal network protocol overhead.  A SAN is a Fibre Channel network that is separate from a business’s regular network.  The SAN is dedicated to storing, backing up, and delivering data to and from users, servers, and storage devices.  SANs speed up data delivery, allow more efficient use of storage resources, and simplify data management. You may be in the process of implementing a SAN for your business, or you may be evaluating such a move.  We will discuss the many benefits of SANs later in this paper.  For now, we will focus on a specific aspect of network management:  the dreaded data backups.  As you will see, if you are in the process of moving to a SAN to alleviate your storage problems, you can reap the added benefit of no-hassle backups by employing Fibre Channel backup devices on your SAN. The backup picture There is no question that backups are essential for data-intensive businesses.  Operating without a backup strategy means risking everything.  Tape backup is a proven technology that is cost-effective and reliable.  That’s why most businesses employ tape drives or tape libraries to back up critical data. If your business network is like most, you probably have a well-established Ethernet-based system connecting your users with application servers, file servers, and each other.  Your network includes various servers dedicated to specific business processes, like resource planning, transaction processing, accounting, e-mail, and such.  These servers typically have their own dedicated server-attached storage— disks attached directly to the server. Businesses are scrambling for computing solutions that can manage extreme data loads with unprecedented speed and accuracy. p1   p2   p3   p4   p5   p6   p7   p8   p9   p10   p11   p12