D2D and Data Protector

For a customer it could be interesting to enhance the backup and recovery strategy and to do the backup (or parts of the backup) to disk first and to copy the data to tape later. The main advantage is the reduced time it will take to recover a single file, as the restore from tape is allways slower. Another point is whe doing the backup for slow servers, tape drives are underutilizied and blocked; no other backups can be done during this time. Backup 2 disk is nothing new with Data Protector and available since years, however when looking at current developments like deduplication, you should have closer look at the different solutions from other vendors. The HP solution might be the most interesting vendor in this situation as software and hardware are very good combined. Other vendors may offer hardware only or even worse can provide bad implemented software, HP is one step ahead and is offering Store Once!
Below you can see how a D2D 2504i is implemented to be used by HP Data Protector. In general the guide below can be used for all HP D2D systems (D2D2502 / D2D2504, D2D4106 / D2D4112, D2D4312 / D2D4324), indepentent if you use iSCSI or FC protocol. As some errors can be done when you implement a D2D system within Data Protector (or any other backup software), it is highly recommended to read the best practice guide first. Only when following the guide you will reach the best backup performance and highest deduplication rate.