I would advice to keep things as simple as possible. The Gig-bit and SAN's(FC) are new unproven technologies. Best way to go for direct attached SCSI's , one attached to each filer. One big library, failure will mess all the filers.A distributed architecture is more safe.

You may go for an FC upgradable library and wait for FC technology to mature..

prem Premanshu Jain IS Engineering Support Lead Nortel Networks, IP Services Division 2305, Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara, CA 95054 Direct: (408) 565-3573 ESN: 655-3573 eMail: prjain@shastanets.com Web: http://www.nortelnetworks.com/ipservices

-----Original Message----- From: Oliver Ho [mailto:oliver@interq.or.jp] Sent: Monday, December 04, 2000 1:22 AM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Backup solution for 2x F840, 2xF630

Dear all,

I have been given a task of designing a Netapps backup solution for my network.

We have 2x F840 2x F630 and various unix servers.

Approx 1TB of data for the netapps.

Various Vendors have informed me that the F630 are too slow for FibreChannel.

Solution 1 One VERY HUGE Library with 2x FC for F840 and 2x SCSI for F630 card mixture for the netapps 4 Tape drives FC Switch for F840s

Solution 2 Library with 2x FC for F840, two tape drives FC Switch for F840s Library with 2x SCSI for F630, two tape drives

Solution 3 Three small library with SCSI for each F630 One Library with 2x FC with two tape drives FC Switch for F840s.

The funny thing is Solution 1 is the cheapest, then 2,3. I guess its because it mean more hardware.

Can someone give me some pointers. These are all very expensive solutions. I have heard that some ppl have used Gigabit ethernet and dumped via NDMP.

We are thinking of using Veritas Netbackup for backups. I have heard that you can get some kind of SCSI->FC conversion, so I can connect to whatever FC connected library I may have.

What would you do in my case?

TIA

Regards Oliver Ho.