•Reduces backup time and costs

In response to changing demands, businesses face the challenge of storing and protecting an increasing amount of data on servers outside the data center. Attempting to manage distributed data with traditional methods is impractical, due to the complexity and cost. Increased business demands for 24/7 application availability have reduced backup windows, limiting backup opportunities over the company LAN. Backing up each server individually to tape is slow, unreliable, costly, and unmanageable for multiple locations. Restoring data and verifying data from tape takes a long time, and 20% to 40% of backup tapes are unreadable. The increased complexity in managing backup and restore for the various hardware and software platforms in the distributed network takes more effort and requires a greater administrative skill set (if administrators are even available at remote sites.).

Snap Server™ by Adaptec helps administrators sidestep this shrinking backup window with data protection solutions based on disk-to-disk and disk-to-disk-tape backup and recovery. This approach removes the typical constraints imposed by the LAN and resolves the conflict between data backups and shrinking backup windows. Instead of backing up data one server at a time, the Snap Server disk-to-disk backup solution backs up data from multiple servers simultaneously onto a central repository, dramatically reducing the total backup time. Support for industry-standard backup applications enables this Snap Server Data Protection Solution to use many third-party server agent modules. This provides fast online backup and recovery that ensures continuous availability for many widely used business-critical applications, including DB2, Informix, Exchange, SQL Server, Oracle, SAP, and Sybase. This Snap Server Data Protection Solution offers a common set of improvements to the traditional backup process, including a fast, online repository for single or group file recoveries and separating the tape archiving process from the server backup process to overcome the limitations of the backup window.

The Snap Server disk-based backup solution can be deployed either as the site’s primary backup server or as a tape displacement solution placed between the backup server and the tape unit. This solution establishes a nearline repository for the backup file-sets from client servers or the existing backup server. Data is backed up and retrieved to/from the solution under control of the backup application. For permanent archives or offsite vaulting, files stored on the Snap Server can be directly up to a tape unit directly attached to the Snap Server (disk to tape) or virtual tape can be replicated to physical tape (disk to disk to tape).

All application servers to be backed up, including any existing backup server, should have an available Gigabit Ethernet port Although Snap Servers work with any Ethernet network, Gigabit Ethernet provides maximum speed and optimal throughput. The backup application determines the protocol used over this connection. It is recommended these servers be connected to a switch that supports Gigabit Ethernet.

In environments where a backup application exists, management and scheduling of the backups is done through the backup environment’s existing client management interface. If the backup application supports NDMP, it can also be used for managing local backup files to the local tape unit.

If the Snap Server is placed as the primary backup server, it includes a native implementation of BakBone’s NetVault WorkGroup Edition with a 500GB Virtual Tape Library (VTL). Backup is managed through the BakBone client interface installed on one available client on the network.

BakBone Application Plugin Modules can be loaded onto each server to provide open file management for business-critical applications, including DB2, Informix, Exchange, SQL Server, Oracle, SAP, and Sybase. Plugin Modules are also available for both disaster recovery and NDMP.