Identifying and Eliminating Backup System Bottlenecks: Taking Your Existing Backup

This tutorial reveals the obvious and not-so-obvious bottlenecks found in enterprise backup systems and offers practical examples for applying the technologies described in the other Data Protection tutorials to achieve one's performance objectives. The goal of this session is to illustrate how one can take an existing backup system to the next level by integrating cutting edge technologies and low-cost disk. We start with the assumption that the end user has made a sizable investment in his/her enterprise backup system and is looking for a road map for affordable growth in both performance and capacity. We also assume that tape is here to stay (at least for now) and that the ultimate goal is to get data onto tape for off-site removal. Topics include accelerating LAN-based backups, achieving maximum performance from tape, disk staging with ordinary disk, capacity optimized backup devices (de-duplication), block-level differencing, removable disk media, and virtual tape. The take home message is that you cannot simply buy your way out of backup system headaches, you must design your way out.