Page 3 of 12 July 2001 Why Choose Native Fibre Channel Backup? Initially, you may have met your backup needs by connecting a SCSI-based tape drive or small tape library to each server to back up that server’s disks.  This is traditional server-attached backup.  As the amount of data and number of servers increased, you probably consolidated your backups by attaching a larger library to a dedicated backup server and sending data across the network to be backed up. Do backups give you nightmares? As critical as backups are to business, they are arguably the least-loved aspect of network administration.  Backups are notorious for bogging down networks. Most network protocols in use today were designed for infrequent transfers of small files and the exchange of instructions between users and processors.  When handling large amounts of data, these protocols introduce significant overhead.  During backups, networks suffer not only from traffic volume, but from data transfer inefficiencies.  As data volumes increase, network delays reach unacceptable levels. In addition to causing network slowdowns, backups also monopolize servers.  During backups, servers must devote a high percentage of their processing power to pulling data from network disks and sending it to tape drives.  These servers are prevented from devoting their full resources to other important business applications. To avoid these problems, you try to schedule your backups for off-hours or weekends.  However, if you are a 24x7 business, there may be no appropriate down-time for backups.  You may be forced to accept routine sluggish network performance, or you may be backing up less often than you would like to avoid slowing down business. As if squeezing backups into an ever-shrinking backup window isn’t hard enough, you have to deal with managing all of the backup systems scattered throughout your network.  You have to visit multiple locations and use a variety of software packages to set backup schedules.  You have to verify that backups complete and you must collect tapes.  You have to perform routine maintenance and troubleshoot problems.  And, with constantly increasing data volumes, you frequently have to install new backup devices and reconfigure servers to support them. The ultimate aggravation is that you are devoting significant resources to keeping your backups running—  resources that are doing nothing to enhance the performance of your network. As data volumes increase, network delays during backups are reaching unacceptable levels. p1   p2   p3   p4   p5   p6   p7   p8   p9   p10   p11   p12