Playing with the Network Backup Software's Big Boys
When you backup your data at home or a workstation, with no network involved a simple zip software utility or CD burner is often enough. However when you are a system administrator, responsible for a large number of servers in a medium to large LAN/WAN you are needs are going to change radically. It's time to start shopping for a commercial network backup software solution that can make maintenance of your total data protection solution an unobtrusive process rather then a chore.
Choosing Your Network Backup Software Solution
There are a large number of commercial software solutions available to backup your network. Before you can even thing of considering one of them, there are certain features it MUST have. Your backup software must have centralized control across the network. There is no way you can afford the time to run from server to server to modify backup scripts or initiate restores. It absolutely must be reliable, or there is no point in using it, and it needs to be easy to use.
Finally it needs to be cost effective. Finally, it doesn't matter how good the network backup software solution is on paper, if you can't get it into your budget it's useless.
Other Nice Network Backup Software Features
Once we have the "must haves" out of the way we can focus on "nice to haves". For example, a good reporting package is very useful. Several available packages provide excellent reporting on how much data is being backed-up, how long the backups require, etc... all with full color trend charts that management loves so much. More important is good reporting on backup failures! In addition it's always nice to be able to do quick and unobtrusive restores.
The need for some features will depend on your network. Do you need support for multiple operating systems? Multiple drive types? SCSI attach devices, Storage Area Networks (SANs) and Network Attach Storage (NAS)? Will you need a scalable solution that works across WANs as well as your LAN? Especially nice, if you can get it, is support for software packages you may be using i.e. DB2, Oracle, MS SQL, SAP R/3, Exchange, Lotus Notes, etc...
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