Storage Networking Fundamentals: An Introduction to Storage Devices, Subsystems, Applications, Management, and File Systems (Vol 1)

Chapter 13. Network Backup: The Foundation of Storage Management

Upon completing this chapter, you will be able to

• Participate in discussions and meetings regarding backup strategies and operations in your organization

• Discuss the designs of backup solutions with coworkers and vendors

• Explain the strengths and weaknesses of different backup approaches, including legacy LAN-based backup, LAN-free backup, serverless backup, and disk-based backup

There is little doubt that responsible storage management begins with the discipline of backup and recovery. In the unlikely and unfortunate event of a loss of systems or storage equipment, the nearly miraculous process of restoring data is used to re-create the data that we depend on so heavily.

This chapter analyzes the fundamental processes and technologies of backup and recovery and outlines the difficulties that companies commonly have with them. A variety of approaches are discussed, starting with legacy LAN-based backup before moving to SAN-based backup methods. At the end of the chapter we discuss the growing use of disk subsystems as storage for backup data.