Many thanks to all who responded.
Original Question:
We are a large heterogenous Unix site with 450 workstations
and servers, mostly Suns, HPs and DECs. We are currently doing
our backups using tape stackers technology from Exabyte. We
have 3 EXB10i's and 1 EXB120 and all backups are controlled by
a series of shell scripts which we developed ourselves. This has
worked okay up till now, but we are now backing up 300 GB and the
amount is threatening to increase drastically in the future.
Our goal is to find a good software package to manage our entire
backup scheme. We have looked carefully at:
1) Epoch Backup
2) Alexandria
3) Networker
Can anyone offer us advice on which backup software products have
produced good results with large scale Unix networks, running under
SunOS 4.1.2 or 4.1.3?
Here is a break down of responses I received:
38% Networker by Legato Phone #:(415) 812-6124
28% Budtool by Delta Microsystems Phone#:(510) 449-6881
9% AMANDA(Advanced Maryland Automatic Networked Disk Archiver) from
cs.umd.edu:/pub/amanda
5% Flashback II by Pinnacle Micro
5% Backupedge by Microlite Phone#:(800)992-2827
5% Backup.unet by Raxco
5% Aria BackupPlus by Control Data
5% RAID 5 system from Clariion
Here is a summary of the responses. I am not able to inculde all the responses
I have received otherwise this email will be about 15 pages(forgive me, it is
already very long). However, I would like to acknowledge all the emails.
*****
You might consider Amanda (Advanced Maryland Automatic Networked Disk Archiver),
available on cs.umd.edu:/pub/amanda.
You will probably get other comments on this excellent product. We've been using
is for almost a year now and it's great, free and very well supported!
*****
We are using Networker, on IBM RS/6000s, SUNs, HP-UX, DECstations, and
SGIs, with impressive results over our own home-grown backup scripts using
cpio.
*****
We are having very good luck with Budtool...
We currently backup about 160GB, using five Exabyte
compression drives in two 120 jukeboxes. We expect to scale up to about
1 Terabyte within the next 18 months.
Standard dump format: Minimal vendor dependency over time. Some of our
data needs to be retained to meet legal requirements. 5-10 years from
now we must be able to retrieve it.
Scalability: Budtool's file history database grows in a linear fashion.
The database will be twice as big, and searches will take twice as long,
when the amount of backup data doubles. This was certainly not the case
with Legato.
Customizability. Budtool easily allowed us to write our own version of
tar to backup the optical platters which are not mounted as standard
Unix filesystems.
Ease of use. Budtool got the nod over Epoch, significantly better than
Legato. We are putting a lot of the day-to-day responsibilities for this
in our operations group, which has other complicated tasks and a varied
skill set.
*****
We are very happy with Legato's Networker.
Some of the advantages:
1. Compression is done locally. The client software compresses
the data locally before sending it to the server. This reduces
network traffic and takes advantage of the local cpu.
2. Easy to restore files. Networker has a gui interface and
on-line indexes. It is easy to used a mouse to select specific
files and specific versions of those files you want restored.
3. Easy to use with the Exabyte 10i stacker.
Disadvantages:
1. You are very dependent on the indexes. If you lose the indexes,
you cannot restore data. These indexes are backed up automatically
with your data so under normal circumstances this is not a problem.
We did lose our indexes one time and had to restore them from tape.
(It was not Networker's fault that the indexes were lost. User
error.)
We have three 10i stackers with 5G tape drives. Each stacker backs
up 4.5 - 5G per night in about 6.5 hours.
*****
We currently use BACKUP.UNET from RAXCO for our heterogenous network,
including Sun, HP and SGI. Works very well for the most part.
*****
Forget the backup systems and get RAID disk subsystems for your servers.
RAID 5 with mirroring removes the need for tapes. I saw it demonstrated
at UNIFORM San Francisco. Clariion series 2300 Disk Arrays could mirror
up to 40 gigbytes (these units come with 3 redundant power supplies and
2 redundant i/o processors RISC and a Wabi/windows monitor interface).
Got to be the slickest thing I've seen in technology yet!.
*****
I would like to thank the following people:
shamel@smith.mais.hydro.qc.ca (Stephane Hamel)
dzambon@afit.af.mil (Dan A. Zambon)
amy.hollander@amp.com (Amy Hollander)
hitty@polaris.orl.mmc.com (Tom Chitty)
Paul Bellan-Boyer <Paul.Bellan-Boyer@dss.fw.gs.com>
tph@sbctri.sbc.com (Timothy P. Henrion)
<9403232001.AA29631@gcm.com>
mfriz@ms3.dseg.ti.com (Mike Frizzell 0128171)
wolfe!bar (Bret A. Robinson)
cygan@wpm.com (Linda Cygan)
<9403232312.AA12294@sherman.eng.octel.com>
dave@goose.ca.pdc.com (Dave Haut)
Stefan Hosa <HOSAST1@VM.AKH-WIEN.AC.AT>
ju@compwr.com (Janet Ulrich)
<199403240851.AAA12175@uhura.biostat.washington.edu>
root@ucs.att.com
john@pendragon.zim.bms.com (John Turner)
janderso%pgn138fs@serling.motown.ge.com (Joseph Anderson)
daley@eve120.cpd.ford.com (Mike Daley)
CYBERMAN <MCCALLD@sonoma.edu>
stlee@patch.tandem.com
ESRI| | Houman Safai
___|___| Systems Administrator
| | 380 New York Street Email : hsafai@esri.com
___|___| Redlands, CA 92373 Telephone: (909) 793-2853
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:08:58 CDT