Using SAN for restore point backups

[Donald_Hursh]

We are currently backing up our servers using BESR 7 to external USB drives and then backing up the external drives to tape.

We are planning to purchase a SAN (iSCSI).  My question is:  Does it make sense to backup our servers (base + incrementals) to folders on the SAN and then backup the folders to tape thus eliminating the need for the external drives.

[Natezilla]

This is exactly what we are doing.  Restore points to a folder i.e. (name of server) on our ISCSI SAN.  Every two weeks the SAN Recovery points are archived to tape. 

Management Console= Win2k3 R2
SAN= EMC Clariion AX150i
Tape Library= MSL2024 LTO4

This setup has worked very well.

-Nate

[Donald_Hursh]

Thanks Nate!

That's what I wanted hear.  

Our company sells, implements and does development for Microsoft Dynamics AX.  We are running SQL Server 2005 of course.  I'm curious how SQL Server performs using an iSCSI SAN.  If you can comment on that I would appreciate it.

Regards,

Don Hursh

nFocus Technologies, Inc.

[Natezilla]

Don,

We are running a BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) in a VM that uses SQL 2K5,  runs quick, we usually get our email on our Blackberry phones before we get them in Outlook.  All of our VMs sit on an ISCSI SAN.  I belive though if you have a high I\O SQL machine fiber attached would be better.  But in our case ISCSI works perfectly.  Hope that answered your question.

-Nate

[David_F]

You might want to review: http://support.veritas.com/docs/294083 about SAN support