simpleSAN Disk-to-Disk Backup!  As the proliferation of low cost IDE/ATA RAID solutions continue to grow and the cost approaches the same per-megabyte as tape, disk-to-disk backup is becoming a more viable and affordable solution. Having a hard drive speed near real-time copy of data, without having to wait on inherently slow tapes to restore, is paving the way for faster recovery times between failures, corruption, virus attacks, etc. Faster recovery times means less down time, minimizing your risk of loss revenue to your organization.

Unlike NAS, an iSCSI backup is performed at a "block-level" verses a "file-level". Therefore, an iSCSI backup is twice as fast as NAS. None of the CPU overhead associated with "rebuilding" the files are necessary using the iSCSI method. But most importantly, the restoration time is performed twice as fast.

Going to the next level, disk-to-disk backup can be performed over your WAN connection to a remote site for a true disaster recovery plan.

Also, technologies are in the making that allow for "serverless" or "extended copy" backups. This is where your application server would be relieved of the duty (I/O and CPU cycles) of protecting it's data. Protection of your data is performed directly from the storage to the hard drive/tape drive. By doing this, there is no performance degradation on the server being protected. This leaves all your server's resources to service your customers, clients and end-users.

Use simpleSAN's experience and expertise to help you design a disk-to-disk solution that will ensure that your mission critical data is allows protected.

iSCSI, all the availability, scaleability and manageability benefits of fibre channel SANs at a fraction of the cost and without the intense learning curve.

Disk-to-disk backup is a "killer app" for iSCSI. Backup is a universal problem, and in all the big shops, the traditional disk-to-tape methodology doesn't work anymore. Users need to create backups directly onto disk, and then off to tape. iSCSI disk arrays provide a cheap, simple way to create an online, real-time recovery methodology at only a fraction of the cost of traditional primary storage.
By utilizing an iSCSI disk array, users can very inexpensively solve the backup problem with no real downside, while at the same time gaining the advantage of dipping their toes into the storage-over-IP waters.
- Steve Duplessie - Enterprise Storage Group