Computer Associates BABNWUP900NE6 Administration Guide - Page 40

Assessing Basic Storage Requirements Assessing Basic Storage Requirements To determine your need for vault space, storage hardware, and storage media, you have to translate your high-level plan into a set of concrete requirements. You need to decide: ■ How much you have to spend on media, hardware, and network improvements? ■ How much data you really need to protect? ■ When can you run backups without interfering with other work? ■ How much traffic your network can handle during backup periods? ■ How long you can wait for an average file or file system to be restored following a data loss? The following sections discuss these issues in more detail. How Big is Your Budget? Sometimes it pays to stress the obvious early on in the planning of a major project: each of the parameters discussed in this chapter comes with a price tag attached. If you need speed, you need a faster, higher-bandwidth network and more and faster backup devices. Both command premium prices. To meet your speed or data security requirements, you may need to buy more media. Media elements are surprisingly expensive, particularly for newer and faster backup devices. You need to decide how much your organization can afford: ■ To spend on a backup and recovery solution ■ To lose in lost data and staff time Then, do the following: ■ Decide what you are prepared to do in order to keep both kinds of costs in bounds. ■ Decide whether performance or economy is your primary concern. ■ Evaluate the trade-offs discussed below in light of this initial decision. 2-2 Administrator Guide