Backup is one of the thornier issues facing the network administrator, but it is also one of those most likely to find itself at the bottom of the “to do” pile. Let’s face it - backup is not particularly glamorous at the side of investigating Gigabit Ethernet or load balancing technologies. Surely it is more important to keep our network running smoothly and at peak performance?

There is far more to backup than simply stringing together a PC, a tape drive and a piece of software, however. Although low-end tape devices have become commodity items, it is worth putting some thought into the requirements of your particular situation before spending money on something which may not satisfy your needs in the long term.

That is why we have entitled this document “Data Storage Management”. This is not just a fancy term for “backup”, since in order to implement a really effective backup policy you need to be on top of your data management. Consider what would happen, for example, if you were to attempt to backup your 320GB server-based RAID array to a single DAT drive. Even with the best compression technology in the world, you are not going to fit this amount of data on a single tape.

Reprinted from www.nss.co.uk