QUESTION POSED ON: 13 January 2003
The backup costs per server on a SAN appear to be very costly. We can justify the costs of a SAN if we look at server consolidation as our measuring stick. However, the infrastructure costs of adding each server appears to be cost prohibitive.
We are currently looking to purchase a SAN from Xiotech. As we add each server to the SAN Fabric, it looks to cost upwards of $8,000. This could easily take out our ROI. We use a Quantum tape library with ArcServe Enterpise to backup our systems. We already own the Library and the Arcserve Enterpise edition.
We are being told that each server needs to connect to the SAN via a Fiber switch, $2200 for two ports on an eight-port switch and two connections per server for redundancy. We need an "Arcserve for SAN" license for each server ($1600), yearly maintenance on the backup software ($600 SAN option), and an FBA card for each server ($500 - $2000, I am using the higher number of 2k).
This comes to approximately 8K of additional costs for each server.
The plan is to add an additional tape unit to our current tape library system that is a Quantum 3100 using LTO tape technology. Continue to hang that library system off from a dedicated server attached to the SAN fabric.
My proposal called for an initial setup of four servers, the SAN fabric, the tape library and the SAN itself. However, as I looked at how I would add another 10 to 12 servers and back them up, it is becoming much more costly. (10 servers @ 8k = another 80k).
Can our vendor be correct? Is there a better way?
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