Few days ago, I’ve received a question about Storsimple LUN use as DPM Storage Pool”?
There are several supported disk to use as storage pool in DPM:-
- Direct attached storage (DAS)
- Fiber Channel storage area network (SAN)
- iSCSI Storage device or SAN
Storsimple is an iSCSI Storage device however based on feedback that I received from Technet Forum , it is unsupported. You cannot present LUN from StorSimple to DPM Server for storage pool.
DPM will convert the LUN into dynamic disk and put replica into multiple disk storage pool when creating protection group.
After thinking twice why it is unsupported is probably due to Storsimple is an automated cloud as tier. It will automatically moved cold data to cloud. Won’t really make sense to move few TB (replica to Windows Azure).
So what’s our options?
You can use DPM to backup data to supported disk (short term goal), tape library or Virtual tape library (long term goal) and lastly to Windows Azure.
On Storsimple, you can present a LUN to a file server which use for VTL. Then on Virtual Tape Library (VTL), you can store the media to this file server.
By using Storsimple features “Automated Cloud As Tier”, you can transfer cold data to Windows Azure. This will reduce transportation cost-by introducing Windows Azure as offsite storage, deduplication of VTL files, compression and encrypted with AES 256 bit encryption.
What do you think ? Please feel free to comment and share to us about using Storsimple LUN as DPM storage pool.
