DOES SUCH A BACKUP SOLUTION MAKE SENSE?!

[nate2345]

Can anyone give me some advice or just their suggestion for my situation:

We have about 15 servers. Doing tape backup is extremely cumbersome. What I would like to do is set up a solution for all the servers to backup to one device, to avoid having to rotate tapes for each server and having to organize each tape and a few other reasons. Backing up via the lan/ethernet is out of the question (for a few reasons concerning our network and hardware).

One thought which came to my mind - please tell me if it's doable - is to have a usb hub with all the servers connecting to it with usb cables and one computer or external drive (for backup) will also connect to it via usb.
Is this possible? Or can you suggest something similar to this?

Thanks in advance!

 

[SharedLibrary]

Not that I am aware of, but what you want is a SAN. Get Fibre cards and cables for the machines, a fibre bridge to connect your scsi tape library too and then fibre switch to connect the whole system. Then you need Backup software that can coordinate sharing the library between all the servers.

 

[nate2345]

We don't have anymore irq's left so we can't add anything to the server. All the ethernet cards are being used and therefore we don't have one for a dedicated line (and we cant add a new one). The only other options that I can think of are connecting either from scsi ports or from usb ports to one central device (i guess a SAN). Any suggestions with these options?

Thanks,
Nate

 

[dkediger]

A SAN aggregates all of your disk storage into a separate hardware unit/network that your servers access. Generally they operate over a fibre network with adapters in each server for such.

You mention your "IRQs" are all used - do you mean expansion slots? You can acquire multi-port ethernet cards if you have multiple NICs in your servers.

For more info check out:

http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/san/saninfocenter.html

 

[nate2345]

We already have 2 multiport nics and one onboard nic, and dell made us disable that nic because there weren't enough irq's. Those nic ports are all being used (so lack of expansion slots isn't an issue). The problem is that since these servers are heavily used and work very tightly with other servers, we don't want to mess with them by making major changes,even by adding nics with more than 2 ports (which is what we currently have). Ideally, we want to just utilize whats already available - which is usb and scsi ports.

Thanks,
Nate

 

[dkediger]

USB won't be a solution if there's any amount of data to be transferred. The bandwidth ain't there.

If you can't backup the servers over the ethernet network to a central unit, you're stuck managing individual tape units in each server - at least that's what I assume you've got presently.

I know there used to be some SCSI "hubs," mainly for situations like this, but I think the SAN products have pretty much killed them off.

 

[nate2345]

What does that mean that there's no bandwidth with usb? I don't expect the data to travel over the lan, just from the server direct to a central storage device using a usb cable(all the servers are right near each other). Basically it sounds like there's no obvious solution for my situation.

Thanks for the info,
Nathan

 

[dkediger]

Well, assuming you would be using 1 central storage device between 15 servers, how much time does that leave you for a backup window on each server. I doubt there's a USB device out there that can take simultaneous data streams from 15 sources and combine them onto one destination.

Although, if there was a USB based disk tower, with removable disks, this might work. This way, there would be multiple destinations. But it would depend on the backup utility to utilize this solution, unless you were using just a straight file copy.

Frankly, I would be very leery of trying to implement this type of setup. It sounds like things are already touchy with the network setup, and adding a non-standard backup system into it is flirtin' with disaster.

 

[nate2345]

My main concern is with 4 of our main servers being backed up to one storage unit. So it's not as bad as it sounds.The other servers I can do backups of their system state before I make a configuration change.

 

[j93saturn]

If you got USB 2.0 in your systems. Check out

http://www.high-rely.com

You will probably have to call the company to see what they can do for a custom setup. But I am pretty sure they can do it.

James
Security +
MCP NT 4.0 / 2000 / 2003
MCSA 2000
MCSE NT 4.0

 

[nate2345]

J93saturn,

I saw their product and spoke with them, the only item they had would allow me to back up 2 servers to one device via usb. Basically, it has 2 usb ports to connect 2 servers via usb. Now I need some creativity to figure out how to get 4 or more servers to this one backup unit (maybe with some type of hub??).

Thanks,
Nate