noob question- snapshots for b/u and different host OSs

[danlar]

I am brand new to SANs aside from some work with XSAN, so go easy on me.

I have a 60TB AX4-5i with LUNs for both windows and linux hosts.

I am trying to devise a backup system.

One thought I had was creating snapshots of all the LUNs and presenting them to one server for backup. I can't see how this would work if the LUN I have a snapshot of is formatted in ext3 and the server accessing it to back it up is a windows box, but there is a lot I don't know at this point.

Is this possible?

The other option I'm looking at is an iSCSI tape library shared by all the hosts with the appropriate 'shared storage option' running on a master backup server. I know this can be done, but it's expensive.

Any other suggestions?

 

[mrdenny]

The Windows box wouldn't be able to read the ext3 file system so that wouldn't work. You would need to mount ext3 LUNs to a Lunix host for backup.

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[danlar]

Ok, that makes sense.

What if the backup server were a Linux box with CIFS drivers installed?

What I am trying (perhaps in vain) to accomplish is a backup solution where only one server controls the tape library, but also one where I am not sending all this data over the LAN.

Any other thoughts/suggestions?

 

[mrdenny]

That should work fine, so long as you've got SMB installed on the Linux server.

Denny
MVP
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
MCTS (SQL 2005 / SQL 2005 BI / SQL 2008 DBA / SQL 2008 DBD / SQL 2008 BI / MWSS 3.0: Configuration / MOSS 2007: Configuration)
MCITP (SQL 2005 DBA / SQL 2008 DBA / SQL 2005 DBD / SQL 2008 DBD / SQL 2005 BI / SQL 2008 BI)

My Blog