Disk-Based Backup: Is LAN-based or SAN-based the Fairest Mirror of Them All?

摘要

Data backup management continues to be a pain point for IT professionals. Between time consuming backup jobs, high resource demands, and poor reliability, this critical task has long been a source of frustration. Fortunately, new disk-based backup solutions are starting to provide options for real relief. By streamlining both the data backup and restore processes, disk-based solutions offer an alternative that Gartner predicts will become the dominant source for data restores by 2008. IT managers appear to agree. In a recent leading storage industry publication survey, 64% of managers polled said they planned to integrate disk-based backup solutions within the next six to twelve months. Although the enthusiasm for disk-based backup is growing, the implementation options are daunting. There are a variety of technologies coming to market, each with cost and functionality tradeoffs that make direct comparisons challenging. Surprisingly, among the options there is one important but often overlooked differentiation: does the replication data flow over the SAN or the LAN? An attribute as fundamental as this may seem too important to ignore, but the LAN vs. SAN decision often gets aggregated with a variety of other decisions that effectively settle the debate before it even gets started. That will soon be changing. Emerging technologies will create new SAN-based data replication options, making the SAN vs. LAN question one of the most critical of all.