LAN-Free Backup
LAN
Master
Application Servers
backup
with
server
Backup client
SAN
Control data
Application data
With LAN-Free Backup typically the Application Server will backup its own
data from disk to tape. Data flow over the SAN is much faster than over the
LAN and can relieve LAN congestion.
If this particular application ran from 9-5, so the application server now sits idle
overnight, so you can back up. It can read its own data, it can write its own
data to tape, it will build its own tape catalogue, its own index, the index then
gets copied back.
But if our application was running 24/7 we probably don’t want our application
server being responsible for doing the backup because its going to take up too
many CPU cycles.
At this point we can separate out the media server component.