Backup over a SAN configuration
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ase Study: Fair Isaac Steps Up to a Tape SAN Page 3
- May 7, 2003
- By Marty Foltyn
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Sidebar: Technology
Before the tape SAN implementation, the overloaded backup environment at Fair Isaac included:
- 20 DLT 8000 tape drives
- More than 3 TB per day full and incremental backups
- Hardware and tape failures, poor configuration
- Extensive manual intervention
- The need for improved reliability, improved throughput, and the ability to scale
To meet these needs, the project team organized a tape SAN architecture based on the following (see figure below):
- StorageTek PowderHorn 9310 Tape Library, with a 6000 tape capacity, controlled by StorageTek ACSLS software
- Eight StorageTek T9940A Tape Drives, with native Fibre Channel connectivity and 80 GB capacity (Since the project's completion, Fair Isaac has added four new StorageTek T9940A drives)
- VERITAS NetBackup DataCenter 3.4, with VERITAS NetBackup Shared Storage Option (SSO)
- Brocade SilkWorm 2800 Fabric Switches, with 16 ports each
- Sun Fire V880 Servers
- Sun Fire 280R Servers, clustered with VERITAS Cluster Server 2.0
- Largest database servers are attached to the SAN through 1 Gb fibre linking directly to the Brocade Fibre Channel switch fabric. Each server has an HBA.
- Remaining servers use common backup servers over Gb Ethernet or Ethernet 10/100, backed up through two common media servers
- NAS storage is backed up through centralized mounts to the media servers (see figure below)
