Application backup

Many applications today can create point in time snapshots of information. Applications from Microsoft such as Exchange 2003 and SQL 2003 can create their own snapshot for backup. The problem is how do we backup these Snapshots? In the past an application server has had a backup agent installed locally on the server and a plugin agent. These agents cost a considerable amount of money and can cause problems if upgrading to a later software version or totally new backup software package. This causes application downtime!

The disk on these application servers might be DAS or served up via an existing fibre channel network. A simple way to save money on application agents and plugins is to use an iSCSI Appliance to serve up a second Snapshot hard disk to the application server and back this up.