Cristalink Support Forums

I've just started using Firestreamer and plan to backup my VM's to external HDD. I currently backup shares and SQL databases to a local RAID array on my backup server. I'm not fond of the way DPM slices up my hard drive so I was considering reformatting my RAID array and using Firestreamer for file devices instead. It seems to me that it would be a cleaner solution. Any thoughts on this?

I am sorry, it's not clear what you meant to ask. Firestreamer is designed for use as long term storage with DPM. Virtual tapes may be more convenient than a local RAID array. You can copy tapes to some other location, take them off-site on an external drive etc.

Sorry, I didn't make it clear (still learning this software). In Firestreamer you have the option of creating disk devices and file devices. It seems that it would be easier to manage my backups if I formatted my internal RAID disk and created file devices from Firestreamer on the disk. (example... f:\backups\file1.fsm, file2.fsm)
Does that make sense? If so, would this be a better solution even for short-term backups like databases and shares?

Most likely, you won't be able to use the drive media mode with a RAID array. Even if you could, it'd give you a single virtual tape for the entire array, and you definitely don't want it. So file media is the best and only way to proceed. It doesn't matter whether it's long or short term backups; whether it's databases, shares or else.

Thanks John for your help.

Carlton.