Assuming that Darwin's would swallow all these infrastructure changes as recommended, Quantum offered its own 64-TB DX100 enhanced backup system to replace the tape libraries in use. This would serve as a "secondary restore device" for use when and if Veritas' Volume Replicator software became corrupt, and also as a staging area for archival backup, which would henceforth be made to a Quantum MAKO PX720 library populated with 12 SDLT 6000 tape drives. The DX100 could be used to provide a fast disk-to-disk restore of data, either as a separate process or in conjunction with Volume Replicator's checkpoint restore feature.
Interestingly, Quantum saw the DLT-MAKO combination not only as a backup to Veritas' Volume Replicator and archival medium for headquarters applications, but also as a means to back up data presumed to be flowing from NAS appliances in the remote stores to NAS appliances in the HQ data center. Some tape drives in the PX720 would be allocated to this purpose and attached via NDMP over Gigabit Ethernet, while the remaining eight drives would be interfaced to the Fibre Channel fabric via DinoStor bridges and virtualized via NetBackup's SSO (Shared Storage Option).
Quantum estimated that this infrastructure rearchitecture would take nine months--three for planning and procurement, the rest for the forklift upgrade. It didn't price the overall solution, only the cost for its DX100 and MAKO library configurations, which totaled $905,705, not including service and support. Including our estimate for software in the Veritas bid, the total cost exceeded $1,256,702--and this, of course, was sans SAN, HDS array and Brocade switches!
Also missing from the bid was a deeper sense of the meaning of, and provisioning for, storage security. Quantum emphasized link encryption and segregation of traffic between the remote stores and the headquarters facility using VPNs, but it didn't mention how data would be secured once written to archival tape or backup disk.
Quantum Corp., (800) 677-6268, (408) 944-4000. www.quantum.com
Like that of Quantum, HP's proposal required the implementation of new gear--specifically, a matched set of EVA 5000 arrays (one local, the other remote), the company's CASA (Continuous Access Storage Appliance) and a SAN. The solution provided for Darwin's to replicate locally, and we quote, "only the critical data on Darwin's heterogeneous storage to a high-performance EVA 5000 array" using the CASA. Then, the CASA would provide synchronous replication of the data, via a Fibre Channel-over-IP tunnel established through the IP WAN to the remote EVA array. This is a classic multihop mirroring solution, using the CASA as the intermediary intelligence and fault tolerance. The vendor was further prepared to support implementation with its HP Disaster Tolerant Management service offering.
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