One SAS Switch to Rule Them All....I need help.

[Lynch, Justin]

Question for the smart ones. My team is managing and maintaining an HP BladeSystem c3000 Enclosure containing ProLiant BL460c server blades (serving as the test bed for our environment). We've purchased 1 HP StorageWorks 3Gb SAS BL Switch, 1 HP StorageWorks Ultrium 920 (SAS) Tape Drive (external), and I believe we still need to purchase a P700m Smart Controller. My actual question: Can I get away with 1 P700m, 1 SAS switch, and 1 tape library just as a means of backing up the test bed? Redundancy isn't neccessary.

I'm open to any and all suggestions - any help is greatly appreciated!

[Jan Soska]

hello,
if you want sas conectivity to blade, each blade must have p700 add on card...

Jan

[Torsten.]

Another option could be the use of an appropriate backup software, copy the files via network to the backup server and to the disks from there. So you need only 1 server connected to the sas disks, 1 smartarray controller only.

[Patrick Terlisten]

... and the potential backup software could be... taaadaaa... HP Data Protector because you don't need to purchase client agents if you only want to backup fileservices. Only for supported databases you need one Data Protector On-Line Extension per server, regardless of the number of supported applications on this server.

But you're right: To connect to the SAS switch you need a P700m mezz-card in at least one blade.

Regards,
Patrick