Do you know what the impact on the filer is? Does the "media server filer" need to have extra CPU capacity or disk capacity? I asked the following of Grant Melvin of Network Appliance:

This is one thing we are considering:

Another plan is to have a storagetek with NDMP media servers... say we have the L700 with 20 tape drives, with OnTap 5.3 I can have 5 filers driving those 20 tape drives (two tape adapters per filer, two drives per tape adapter). These are now my "NDMP" media servers. The backups would go across a dedicated GB network.

So, with NBU 3.2 I can do the filer to filer backups through these filer media servers, right?

My question is: what impact is this operation on the filer -- both CPU/disk space needs, etc? What is the minimum filer I could use as these media servers -- little 720's with one shelf/minimal disk? or would this require a beefier filer? ------

Is anyone actually doing 3-way NDMP backups w/ NetBackup. We have been pleased with using NBU with NDMP and directly attached drives for our filers for about 18 months... but, we are about out of capacity in our two tape libraries. Most filers have two tape drives (which we prefer), so when we install the three filers we just received, we have hit our limit... and we have three more filers on order... So, we need to either get another tape library or come up with a solution that doesn't require an entire tape library for every 5 filers.

Thanks for any input --

Kelly

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Kelly Wyatt, Kelly.Wyatt@SAS.com Systems Programmer Integrated Solutions Consulting SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Drive / Cary, NC 27513 http://www.sas.com