HP Data Protector Software Performance White Paper

Storage Area Network (SAN)

SAN solutions (see Figure 5) are very similar to DAS solutions. However, the storage on the

SAN may be shared between multiple servers. This shared storage can be both disk arrays and

tape libraries. To the server it will appear as if it owns the storage device, but the shared Fibre

Channel bus and the controllers for the disk and tape devices allow the devices to be shared.

This configuration is very advantageous for both resource sharing and performance.

Figure 5. SAN

Other backup and restore designs

The following technologies go beyond the scope of this white paper:

• Direct backup (a severless backup solution for SAN environments)

• Disk backup

• Split mirror backup

• Snapshot backup

• Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)

For further information, see the HP Data Protector Zero Downtime Backup Concept Guide at

http://www.hp.com/go/dataprotector

Performance bottlenecks

The goal is that a tape drive becomes a performance bottleneck. In that case, backup and restore

times are predictable.