Why do I backup SQL Databases Directly to the Network Instead of a Local Drive?

My workplace (SSW) is looking at standardizing our MSSQL backup procedures by having the same maintenance plan on each SQL server in the origination. I was asked to make this plan put backups to a local hard drive on each SQL server, which I disagreed with. My boss, Adam Cogan (Microsoft Regional Director) asked for Greg Low’s (Microsoft Regional Director, SQL Server MVP and owner of the SQL Down Under podcast) opinion on the matter. He advised that he also runs local backups on all of his MSSQL Servers, and then later copies them to a centralized network location.

The main points I was arguing that it is better to backup directly to a network share were:

1. Hard drive space on the SQL Servers is not unlimited – Why use more of it with backups when you could use a dedicated file server?
2. In a disaster situation – like a servers hard drive dying – having backups locally is useless
3. The 1 Gigabit network is fast enough to handle the traffic when the servers backup over the network

Further to that, the servers here at SSW are backed up using Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2010 Beta. DPM synchronizes the data from our SQL server every 2 hours, this removes the need to do transaction log backups. This aligns with the companies Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – which describes the acceptable amount of data loss measured in time.

For these reasons, I choose to backup directly to a network location instead of locally as recommended.