I read a lot of posts where people are comparing the differences both positive and negative with using disk or tapes as backup media. Here are the ones I see the most.

• Disk Advantages: Cheaper, More Storage for Cost, Faster
• Disk disadvantages: Not as reliable, Easier to Damage, Removal / Storage of Media
• Tape Advantages: Reliability, Easier swap out of media
• Tape Disadvantages: Cost, Speed 

Just found a great article on the HP website that helps organizations run throught all the information they need to help them decide what type of equipment they need in order to create their first SAN environment. The article is aptly call the My First SAN Guide. 

As the amount of data collected and stored on corporate networks increases, there is more and more a need to have that data available and ready at all times. This need has begun to if not already influence the way companies design their internal and external networks. In the past it was sufficient for many organization to buy servers with large amounts of hard drive space, but as the data demands for companies grows this solution for soem has reached its limit.

In comes the SAN - Storage Area Network or its close cousin the NAS - Network Attached Storage. This article will deal with the question, What is a SAN? We will post a future article on “What is a NAS?”. 

Details:
The Recovery Storage Group (RSG) feature in Exchange 2003 allows you to mount a second copy of an Exchange mailbox store on any Exchange server in the same Exchange Administrative Group as the original, while the original store is still running and serving clients. This allows you to recover data from an older backup copy of the store without disturbing client access to current data. After the RSG is created and one or more stores are added to it, you can restore online backup sets to it. Then use the Exchange Server 2003 version of Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Merge Wizard (Exmerge.exe) to extract mailbox data from the stores into .PST files, and optionally merge the extracted data back into the online stores. 

Details:
The procedures described below are an easy way to quickly recover a mailbox that has been deleted by mistake. This should not be seen as a full substitute for performing individual mailbox backups using Backup Exec ™.

Performing a mailbox backup using the Agent for Microsoft Exchange Server on a regular basis provides a history of backed up mailboxes, enabling recovery to any point in time as well as the ability to restore individual mails and folders.