For a long time, many companies have been securing their data using simple backup systems by means of daily backups on tapes and storing them indefinitely. In reality, however, the more Servers are in operation, the more uneconomical it becomes to maintain a separate tape drive for each Server. Also, at some point of time, large quantities of data cannot be backed up thru the network, because the bandwidth is no longer sufficient. 

For this reason, a Fiber Channel based Storage Area Network (SAN) is available for storing large volumes of data on a tape drive efficiently. In this, tape resources are assigned dynamically to individual Servers for backup operations. This optimizes the common utilization of drives. Moreover, SANs offer additional possibilities for scalability and remote access. 

Advantages of a SAN:

• Uninterrupted resource allocation for several devices and 
  workstations
• Distribution of disk groups is configurable in multi-server 
  environment
• Improved performance thru distribution to several links in 
  SAN
• Automatic storage thru Relocation bei laufendem Betrieb
• Uninterrupted backup by Volume Snapshots

it-soft can take up the system administration for your SAN in its Data Center.