One of my favorite technical aspects of NetApp Syncsort Integrated Backup (NSB) is the way it simplifies your backup architecture by removing the middleman. What’s the middleman? It is your media or device servers.
Traditional backup architectures look something like this:
App Server → Switch → Media Server →Switch → Storage/Tape
Notice where the media server is in that mix. What is it actually doing?
Well, back in the hazy crazy days of the internet dialup boom, I worked at a networking company. One of the engineers there used to describe a switch as being a device that has two things: a “goes-inza” and a “goes-outza.” Bits come in here, and they go out there. Simple.
The thing about switches is they are custom built for this. They can switch millions of packets without issue because they use custom built ASICs, high-performance backplanes, firmware that’s been optimized for decades, all dedicated to do one thing and do it really well. A switch is born to be a goes-inza/goes-outza device.
Now look at that media server again. What’s it doing? It’s acting like a switch. It exists only to pass data to the storage target (and maybe gather some information along the way). But what does it run on? Typically a PC, or maybe a Unix server. Both are general purpose devices not at all optimized to switch packets, yet we deploy them as switches in our backup designs. Now, if I visited your IT department and suggested you replace all your switches with PCs, you’d show me the door (or possibly the window) in short order. And you’d be right to do it. But this is exactly what we are using our media servers for: they are doing the job of a goes-inza/goes-outza device.
Smart? Hardly! It’s like a toll booth on your backup freeway. You’re zooming along at 70 miles an hour, then you have to slow way down to pay the media server toll, and then it’s clear sailing the rest of the way. Wouldn’t it be nice to get rid of those toll booths?
Take a look at the NSB architecture:
App Server → Switch → NetApp Storage
Pretty neat! No media servers at all. The NSB agents send data right to the NetApp disk target. This is where the “integrated” in the product name comes from. NSB works with the NetApp ONTAP operating system, using NetApp Snapshots, FlexClones and so on. No need for putting a box in front of the target (I won’t even get into the absurdity of having a PC operate your disk snapshots… at least not today).
It’s also a great cost reducer. How many media servers do you have today? You could retire or repurpose all of them when you switch to an NSB solution. Further, as data grows and grows, the media server becomes a bottleneck. Users are often forced to upgrade the hardware or add more servers to keep up. Wouldn’t it be nice to never have to worry about that anymore?
Time to think about a better backup architecture with NSB, and time to send that middleman packing!
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