SAN backup

[hpuxsa]

We have our servers connected to EMC 8730 through 2800 brocade switches. For redundancy we have the hba0's connected to one switch and hba1's connected to another. We have zoning enabled.
We have an L700 library with 9 drives they are connected to the servers using a fibre to SCSI bridge (1 fibre i/p and 4 scci o/p). So we have connected 3 drives each to three servers.

We have more than 20 servers and now the backups are done over the LAN through these 3 servers. Could you please let me know if i can do the following.

Connect another brocade 2800 switch to one of the existing brocade switch (cascade). Then connect the fibre/SCSI bridges to the new brocade switch. So that the drives are not locally connected to any servers and they are on the SAN. Please advise if there is a better option.

[Sanjay Kumar Suri]

I think it is viable. What you taking about is using SAN to connect your tape drive via fibre/SCSI bridge so that the tape drive is visible to hosts connected via SAN.

Make a fabrix and intrduce zoning (data & tape zone) for better management and redundancy.

sks

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,

If all your servers has FC-HBAs it is of course a better idea to back up data direct via SAN, at least if your servers can deliver data fast enough to stream the drives and there is a significant amount of data on each server to backup. What I don't understand is why you want to cascade another swith for the fibre bridge.

Which backup software are you using ?

[hpuxsa]

If i do not cacade then how can i do this ?

I do not want to buy another FC card for all the servers to connect to the new brocade

[Leif Halvarsson_2 · Accepted solution]

Hi,
I am not sure I about your enviroment, but if:

- All servers you want to backup is connected to one or both of the existing switches.
- The library uses an internal or external FC-bridge/Storage Router which also is connected to one of the switches.

Then it would be possible to zone the switches so all servers could access the library.

[Peter Mattei]

If you build a third SAN for backup this will ease it a lot because you do not have to take care of interoperability issues between the L700 and the EMC array.
You then have 2 SANs for disk (redundancy) and another SAN for backup.

The key to this is the backup software used. It has to support SAN backup. Some vendors charge for that feature!
The SW needs to be able to reserve a SAN tape drive so that it will not be used by another backup job.
If you use HP DataProtector this is a simple process. You can use your existing Cell Server, configure your SAN tape drives and start.

Cheers
Peter

[Randy Weis]

One more important point, which I have made before in these forums: it is strongly recommended that you use a separate HBA for your sequential backup traffic. Your backup software vendor will tell you that, and it is in the HP doc for EBS solutions. Any LIPS or other primitives caused by the backup devices could cause disk issues, and you do not want Secure Path meddling with your ST devices (streaming tape).
One other point. You can easily share the existing fabric with oyour backups, by setting up separate zoning. Create aliases for your NSR ports, and create a zone for each backup server to include its backup HBA and the port(s) for the NSR. This presupposes that you have sufficient ports!

[Peter Mattei]

Well, we are talking EMC so no Secure Path involved, either PVLINK or PowerPath.

You have to configure the FC-SCSI bridges in the tape library to fabric anyway! This limits the LIPs to the tape environment only!

Having an independent backup SAN with dedicated is always good to seperate traffic and supply enough bandwidth.Cheers
Peter

[Chris Vail]

Without trying to sound like a salesman for EMC, let me encourage you to look into Business Continuance Volumes on your 8730. Basically, this means buying a lot more diskspace on your 8730. Lastly, you'll need a dedicated backup server. Although this is pricey and a PITA, its worth the time, money and toil.
The BCV is basically a 3rd mirror copy of your data. The BCV is established, or mirrored against your production data. When the synchronization is complete, this mirror is broken, detached, and then re-attached to your backup server. The backup is made from this host.
This has several advantages: 1) The backup is made entirely within the 8730 and doesn't impact your network AT ALL. 2) Clock cycles for the backup are passed to the processes internal to the 8730. Backups do not affect the CPU at all: it operates normally. 3) All your backups occur from a single host. You can load this one host up with RAM and F/C cards, and get all kinds of speed out of it. 4) You can make more than one BCV copy. This really ties in nicely for development and test purposes. 5) Restoring from BCV is a lead-pipe cinch, and unbelievably fast. Your tapes become a second level of backup rather than the primary.
Get in touch with your friendly neighborhood EMC rep, and have him take you to lunch and give you the low-down details. They do this kind of thing all the time.


Chris

[hpuxsa]

Leif,
Sorry i forgot to mention that we were running out of ports in the existing brocade that was why i was thinking of cascading the switch.

As Peter mentioned we have to configure the Fibre bridge port as fabric then where does an FC-AL come into picture? If we do not have an FC-AL then would the question of LIPS arise?

So would it be fine to implement a seperate zone which would have hba's and the fibre bridge port. Would LIPS have any impact on this config? I will try to build a dedicated SAN for backups at a later stage.

Thanks a lot for the help.