Autoloader advice

[Hightower]

Hi folks,

We're looking at placing an order for an autoloader this week, for our backup solution. The thing is, autoloaders are somewhat a new technology for me and I was just wondering if anybody could advise on our setup.

We have three servers that we would want to initially backup to the autoloader, which we were planning on getting BackupExec licenses to do this. One of these servers would be the 'master' and the other two would have agents on them.

The autoloader has SAS interface - would this kind of connection plug straight into the master server?

I'm probably worrying about nothing, but thought it would still be best to run it pasts the experts before I go ahead with this.

Cheers,

[nicholab]

SAS is serial attached scsi it like pata vs sata it is direct links point to point. You will need a SAS interface card that works with your autoloader and backup software.

[bossman]

@Hightower:

We have an autoloader here HP LT04, the way I will be setting it up is to attach it to a NAS and the Nas in turn be attached to our Servers. The theory is Disc 2 Disc backup from the Servers to NAS during the night and then during the day when there is no activity on the NAS backup to tape which can be taken off site every night.
We also have A SAN which we can also back up to if needs be.

[Hightower]

We have a couple of FreeNAS boxes which we currently backup to, and it would be nice to include these somehow in a D2D2T backup.

Anybody got any recommendations on an SAS card that should work?