SUMMARY: backing up PCs over a network

From: John Elliot (johne@aiai.ed.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Mar 15 1995 - 01:59:05 CST


This is an intermediate summary, I'll send out another one when I've
come to a final decision.

First my original message :

We are looking at backing up our PCs internal disks, preferably by using
exabytes that are connected to Suns on the same network. Does anyone
know of a version of dump that would run on PCs. i.e. I would like to be
able to run the equivalent of :
 
  dump 0f dumphost:/dev/nrst1 <files to dump>
 
on a PC.
 
We also have a single mac, and it would be nice to be able to do the same
for it.
 
Any suggestions for other methods of backing up PC's in a mixed Sun/PC
environment would also be welcome.

Thanks to:

jhar2572@pacesetter.se (Joakim Hartikainen)
acobley@mic.dundee.ac.uk
Darryl Wagoner <darryl@sai.com>
russ@issi.com
bmaggio@lci.com (Bill Maggio)
bharrell@digit.com (Bruce L. Harrell)
tkevans@eplrx7.es.duPont.com (Tim Evans)
raoul@MIT.EDU
Chris Wozniak TISC <chris@tisc.edu.au>
Birger.Wathne@vest.sdata.no (Birger A. Wathne)
Stephan Eppinger <steve@bihq00.bi.ehu.es>
ellen@kuroda.com (Ellen Herrera)
Ted Beatie <tcb@cipr-diva.mgh.harvard.edu>
Harvey Dytch <hd@blocks.bsd.uchicago.edu>
Ted Beatie <tcb@cipr-diva.mgh.harvard.edu>
jim.leahy@valcom.com (Jim Leahy)
hb@o2tech.o2tech.fr
simpson@dataman.co.uk (Paul Simpson)

I received the following suggestions :

1. Copy the disk to an NFS file space and backup from there.
        - I had considered this but it was too heavy on
          disk space.

2. Apparently chameleon NFS from NetManage allows you to mount the
   dos disks on a sun - and then backup from there
        - We don't have this product, and I didn't check it out
   A similar setup was suggested to copy the PCs onto an NT server,
   and then mount the NT disk on the sun.

3. SelectMAIL (Sun) has a dos version of dump (apparently - I didn't
     check this).

4. Legato Networker
     This would appear to be the ideal solution if money were no
     consideration, however the minimum sun/PC backup sofware comes
     in at UKP 3500. That only allows 10 clients, futher multiples
     of 10 cost UKP 1500. Sun ships a version for a single machine
     with Solaris 2.4.
     The software helps you do all the backup scheduling, as well
     as allowing users to browse lists of backed up files and request
     a restore.

5. FTP software do a remote tar utility for DOS (windows ?).
   It appears to be included with a number of their products.
        Again, I havn't checked this.

6. PD/Shareware utilities
   - WinTAR (ftp.cica.india.edu:/pub/pc/win3/winsock/wtar14u.zip)
        This looks pretty nice, it's one down side is that you have
        to actually be on the PC to run it. It appears to do a
        tar/compress on the PC then use rsh/rexec to the unix
        machine to dump to the tape. It has a nice GUI interface
        that lets you chose files to dump/restore.
   - gnu tar apparently can do network dumps from a PC

7. For the mac there is a program called macdump
     (src.doc.ic.ac.uk:/computing/systems/mac/macdump/*)
     This seems like it should do the job, though we don't have
     it up and running yet. It sits on top of CAP.

8. Other software suggested (I don't have more than the name):
        Arcada
        soss - allow a sun to mount a PCs disk
        fastback
        pcbackup
        SM-ARCH
        Amanda
        Interbackup

John.



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