Hi guys,

I have a few questions about getting tapes off site.

I've got 2 media servers (Solaris10) running NBU 6.5.4 talking to a Solaris 10 master server.

each media server has 500 GB of disk and shared access to 8 LTO-4 tape drives.

each media server has a storage unit of type basic disk and one for the robot with the drives (so 4 storage units in total).  the 2 disk STUs are in a group  for disk and the 2 tape STUs are in a group for tape.

I need to a.) perform backups daily (weekly full, daily diff), and b.) send them offsite the next day.

The majority of the backups are relatively small (20 - 50 GB for a full, and only a few GB for the daily diff).  Some are really big.  I'm planning to convert those to SAN clients.

For the smaller backups, what is the best way to accomplish the goals?

i could:

write backups to tape, use Vault to copy them to an offsite pool and ship them.

write backups to disk staging, make 2 copies to tape (using life cycle policies?) - one for offsite and one for restore jobs onsite.

write backups to disk and use Vault to make 2 copies to tape - one for offsite and one for restore jobs onsite.

any thoughts / suggestions?

thanks,

ADDODD