> Before I take the plunge and buy it, does anyone have any experiences with backup.uunet?
> It is a network backup system from Systems Center.
>
> Any suggestions of a better backup system?
>
Firstly, the above question did not mean that I wanted resellers calling me to offer to
sell me their products. So. To whoever turned my name and phone number over to a
sales rep, please don't do it again. It was not appreciated.
The main contenders that were mentioned by people included (in no particular order):
Networker Legato
Backup.uunet Systems Center
Budtool Delta Microsystems
Backup Copilot Sun Microsystems
Flashback Pinnacle Micro
The consensus seems to be that all are good products each with their own set of
"great features" and disadvantages.
Here are pieces of the responses:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Alan...
I evaluated Backup.UNET for my company which runs a large network
of Suns.
Basically, it's a fundamentally good product with a few major
Achilles' heels.
First one is that only one tape drive can be used per host. For
instance, Backup.UNET can write simultaniously to five tape drives
as long as they're located on five different hosts. This is a
'wait for the next release' special.
Second is that the product is just plain SLOW.
If you have relatively small amount of data to backup, this is not
a bad product. For companies like mine, Backup.UNET doesn't cut it
on a Sun 690 with 30gb of disk.
Hope this helps.
Steve Giuliano
steve@IBX.COM
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Used to work there as a software engineer a few months back before
heading west.
The idea is to share tape resources transparently on the net along
with an online record of files ... makes life alot easier. Users/
Administrators can use a GUI (OpenLook) to perform dumps and
request restores.
The perfect Backup.UNET environment is to have a Jukebox ... with the
use of 'recycle' scripts it would theoretically never have to be
opened ... as the user requests a restore the juke nabs the tape.
Good dude to write is alm@eliot.UUCP: he's the head of Development
at System Center .... good guy!
Network Legato is poorly designed: It has a proprietary dump format
and uses a client/server model for its DBMS (BUNET is peer/peer).
Budtool is nothing more than a GUI to cron.
Hasta,
Frank Miller
SoftWare Engineer III
Tektronix
-----------------------------------------------------------------
I reviewed an evaluation copy of Legato NetWorker (release 3.0) and it
looked very good.
I have not reviewed any others, but I have heard of several. Delta
Microsystem's BudTool is apparently one of the more popular. Sun is
supposed to have a new product called Backup Copilot. Systems Center Inc.
has a product called BACKUP.UNET. That's all I know.
The following info is from the Sun Catalyst CDware Volume 3...
> I can send this info to whoever wants. Its a long description of
> backup.uunet. - Alan
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Alan
we have been using Flashback. It is Sunview, but the new version
(available now) is Openwindows.
It works well,
allows online review of tape contents,
emails results to selected users,
can be run by accounts other than root (uses rpc),
backs up networked hosts,
allows for multiple backup methods (dump, tar,cpio, bar),
restores via menu selection (with email of results),
writes labels for each tape and maintains usage figures,
allows certification of tapes. etc.
It does what we need to backup our main servers and the assorted
diskful clients hanging off them.
Contact is: Susan Butts
Pinnacle Micro
19 Technology
Irvine CA 92718
Ph: (714) 727-3300 Fax: (714) 727-1913
E-mail: pinnacle@sunkist.west.sun.com
Good luck
Frank Allan
Network Manager e-mail: fallan@awadi.com.au
AWA Defence Industries Phone: Intn'l + 61 8 343 6357
Module 5 Endeavour House Home: Intn'l + 61 8 263 5723
Fourth Avenue Fax: Intn'l + 61 8 262 7489
Technology Park SA 5095 Australia
-----------------------------------------------------------------
About a year ago I was the SUN Beta test for UNET.
During the two years previous to this I was a Unitech UBACKUP customer.
The damn thing never did work right for large (> 1 GB backups) processors.
I was really looking forward to UNET, but it turned out to have the same
problems. I had outstanding calls to Unitech for 4 weeks, but they never
returned my calls (in fairness to them they were being bought up at the
time).
Finally, in disgust, I wrote my own backup system -- putting in all the
things I liked about UNET (catalogs, tape pools) yet keeping it stripped
down for performance reasons.
My one piece of advice, test it on your worst backup nightmare before buying.
When I used the package it did a good job on backing up and restoring a few
medium-size file systems; but when the job got hairy it wouldn't work.
Robert W. Reinke <uunet!fed!m1rwr00>
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Systems Center is known to be a good and responsive company with regards to
their similar products on the IBM Mainframe platforms. We looked into the
possibility of using their Unix version, but the cost of implementation in a
distributed workstation environment was prohibitive.
Two other vendors of software backup products which are both fairly robust and
seem to have a wide acceptance are "Legato Networker" and "Delta Micro Budtool".
Legato, like Backup.uunet, use propriatary backup formats. Budtool, uses
standard Unix dump/tar/cpio, but to really "neat" requires their tape drive
(although it will work with Brand-X trape drives as well).
Budtool and Legato are "server" priced instead of "client" priced like the
Backup.uunet product. If you're backing up a lot of stations to one server
tape drive, Legato or Budtool may be worth a look. If you're dealing with a
single (or limited number of) clients, backup.uunet may be cost effective.
Incidently, we use Legato's Networker.
John Kilheffer
amp19263@garfield.amp.com
> I believe that backup.unet can use several "standard" tape formats. Also
> they claim to have dropped their pricing recently. - Alan
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to all who responded.
uunet!smw002!steve (Steve Giuliano)
uunet!shadow.cna.tek.com!frankm (Frank 'Scruff' Miller)
uunet!niwot.scd.ucar.EDU!era (Ed Arnold)
Alex Zbyslaw <uunet!europarc.xerox.com!Zbyslaw>
Doug Acker <uunet!se05.wg2.waii.com!dla>
uunet!baobab.awadi.com.AU!fallan (Frank Allan - Network Manager)
uunet!sharpwa.com!msd (Mark Deason)
Robert W. Reinke <uunet!fed!m1rwr00>
John R. Kilheffer <uunet!garfield.amp.com!amp19263>
Alan J. Rothstein Mercadian Capital L.P.
(201) 626-2329 111 Pavonia Avenue East
uunet!merccap!alan Jersey City, NJ 07310
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