Ultimate business protection : DAS backup solutions

DAS backup solutions are the simplest data protection solutions. If your business has some or all of these characteristics, you may benefit from a DAS solution:

• Does not need to support online business-critical operations
• Will be well served by daily or weekly backups
• Maintains a small number of networked servers (fewer than 5)
• Supports a single operating system
• Wants plug-and-play capability
• Needs simple and effective manageability
• Is acquisition cost conscious
• Is focused on storage capacity, performance, reliability, and durability

• HP DAT: 12 to 36 GB
• HP DLT VS: 40 GB
• HP SDLT: 160 GB
• HP Ultrium (LTO): 100 to 200 GB

Regardless of which you select, all of these technologies are well established and ensure that your data is backed up and restored reliably. Media for all four of these technologies is also readily available, durable, and cost-effective. In a typical implementation, the tape drive connects directly to the server or workstation whose data you want to protect. The backup management software also resides on the server to simplify the setup. If you have a larger system that requires more than one tape to back up, you can choose to deploy an autoloader or tape library to automate the backup process. Autoloaders and libraries bring significant resource savings and reliability improvements:

• Manage backups from a single management console
• Maintain all of your media in a single device
• Simplify the entire backup process

• A standalone tape drive relies on a person to insert the tape media each day or week as your business demands.
  
  
• Environments that require a higher tape capacity and automated backup benefit from an autoloader
  
  
• As the number of servers in your company grows to meet new business demands, so will the complexity and cost of administering your backup solution, along with your capacity requirements. Keep business growth in mind as you evaluate the capacity of the different tape technologies.
  
  
• Because tape backup solutions back up data less frequently (daily or even weekly), they are less suitable for businesses that need to restore critical data from a point of loss.
  
  
• Tape backup solutions can be slower than other options, so if you have a significant amount of data to back up, you may have a large backup window or may have to plan to devote some of your network traffic to backup tasks during standard working hours.
  

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