Thanks everyone for your valuable suggestions.
I decided to go with Veritas.
Here're the responses:
--------------------------------------------------
Richard Bond <rbond@mbt.washington.edu>
Hmm- Veritas is based on Gtar, and can
be restored with tar- I liked that.
I like Veritas, but miss the true calendar.
I liked Netbackup, but was not pleased with
its performance against NetApps.
Currently using Veritas, and pleased with it.
rcb
---------------------------------------------------
"Marco Greene" <mgreene@sympatico.ca>
Well I can answer the questions on NetBackup. I have configured it at
several customer sites and I have had little problems...or at least none
that have been overcome.
I have been very happy with NetBackup...haven't had any official training
but I still find it very easy to setup. Much easier than Legato.
---------------------------------------------------
"Jimmy Carter A.S (Benchmark - CSE)" <asjimmy@wipro.co.in>
Hi Chandrashekar,
The following are my suggestions.
1. Don't go in for Budtool.Though Legato has bought Budtool, the official
support for Budtool will be stopped in a couple of
years and you will really find it difficult to get support later.
Budtool uses a native format as such.So you can use ufsrestore to
restore the backedup data.
2. You can go in for Legato or Veritas. I had also tried Legato for
NetApps but got fucked up. There is a particular patch to be
added before you can backup NetApps.I haven't tried it.
3. Veritas is a better choice.It's more reliable and unlike Legato, it has
no restrictions regarding the format being used.
Veritas is compatible with tar format also.So once you backup using
Veritas, you can restore using tar.
----------------------------------------------------
Danny Cox <danny.cox@alcatel.com>
Chandra
my company (not Alcatel) resell Budtool - or at least we did. Once
they were bought
out by Legato we've had great difficulty getting anything like useful
support. I can't
guarantee that the Networker support is as bad, but it hasn't enthused
me to Legato
any.
One of Budtool's strong points was that it used standard unix backup
utilities to do
its work. It writes a header onto the tape and then the
ufsdump/tar/cpio/whatever
dump after that. To restore from a tape which has been backed up using
Budtool IS
possible therefore. They even put a small program on the front of the
tape to help
you do this if necessary. That said, the software is not that robust -
the file + tape
histories aren't anyway - not helpful if you can't get good support.
The support you
will get comes out of California too which really makes it uncomfortable
for me in the
UK. It might be easier for you if you're in the US.
As far as Networker goes, I gather they're working on NDMP etc - if
you tell me its
been released now, then that's news to me and interesting. As to how
well it works
I couldn't tell you. Networker and Veritas Netbackup both use their own
proprietary
dump format and recovering from a restore is slower than with Budtool.
They use
larger tape/file-history databases too. That said, Newbridge, now
bought out by
Alcatel, use Netbackup in the UK and it seems to work pretty well.
That's probably
the direction my company will recommend our clients to go in as we
retire Budtool.
Legato probably won't provide any migration tools between Budtool and
Networker
so that doesn't make any difference. I'm sure the sales folk will tell
you they will,
but the word on the ground as far as I can glean suggests that unless
it's there and
waiting for you, don't rely upon it.
cheers
Danny
-----------------------------------------------------
"Paveza, Gary" <gary.paveza@AIG.COM>
In answer to your 2nd question, I believe that is how Legato works. At
least that's what I was told. We are currently implementing Legato (or will
be once I can purchase my silo), and was told that we would have x number of
drives in the silo with each drive attached to one system. So, the servers
see nothing different, but the legato software talks to the robotics to
automatically load the appropriate tape.
-----------------------------------------------------
"Jeff Kennedy" <jkennedy@amcc.com>
The choice will most likely depend on your growth time frame. If you
will be in the 20 Solaris box range with a few NA's thrown in then
BudTool will work great. I'm using it now with 3 NA's and 15+ Solaris
boxes. We're probably moving towards NetBackup soon for a few reasons,
not the least of which is Legato support (it blows, although the mailing
list is quite good). Also, Networker isn't even scheduled to be fully
ndmp capable until Q3, for now you have to backup the NA's across the
network. I don't know about you but that equates to about 800 GB's for
me. Over the network??? I don't think so. Both BudTool and NetBackup
will do direct attach backups for NA's.
However, BudTool is now owned by Legato and all development for it has
been suspended, so it's essentially a dead product.
BudTool uses native dump utilities for backups so you can restore direct
from tape without BudTool; it works, I've done it. NetBackup uses gnu
tar as it's format except for NA's and then it uses ndmp dump (I think),
but the idea is the same - restore without the software is possible.
Also, the indexes for NetBackup are flat files not a relational database
like Networker, this is a good thing in my experience. Too many
database corruptions for me.
Ultimately it's whatever works best for your environment, but personally
I dislike Networker so that leaves me with NetBackup.
~JK
--------------------------------------------------------
Tim Evans <Tim_Evans@troweprice.com>
BudTool was bought out by Legato, and the product's life as a standalone
probably will end soon. I believe they were going to fold it into
NetWorker, but don't have any details.
--------------------------------------------------------
Chris Labatt-Simon - D&D Consulting <labatt@dandd.com>
Even before we started selling equipment and software, for the first seven
years of our company we recommended Veritas, and most recently Veritas
NetBackup, for companies running Solaris/NFS environments. When NetApp
became more common as a platform, we continued to recommend Veritas as a
solution due to their vocal committment to Network Appliance. We currently
have NetBackup successfully installed and working in a number of our
customers networks. In addition, we also now have three NetBackup for NDMP
installs working great with NetApp's. NetBackup will fully control all of
the library robotics and multiple drives through the NetApp when running in
NDMP mode. Performance wise, we actually have a few bundles now for NetApp
customers consisting of Quantum/ATL tape libraries, NetBackup and an IBM 1U
server to run it on, and we're backing up about 120GB/hour on a two DLT7000
drive library (with compression).
Chris
--------------------------------------------------------
"Rasana Atreya" <rasana_atreya@hotmail.com>
I've worked with both Legato and Veritas's Netbackup, and I think in terms
of usability Netbackup is far superior. Very easy to setup, very intutive,
very easy to use.
I set up Netbackup 3.2 just recently with NDMP. We have an Auspex NS2000
fileserver. An ATL 2/68 (2 DLT 7000s) is attached directly to it. I expect
to eventually backup 750G. Right now I'm doing about a third of it. It gives
me between 12-14G/hour. With the DLT4700 stacker I previously had I got 1-2
G/hour, so this setup makes me happy! :)
And this is a very basic setup. I haven't looked at any tuning as yet.
Rasana
----------------------------------------------------------
Ross Parker <parker@bctm.com>
Hi, Chandra,
> I've used Networker before and I'd go
> with it if we did not have Network Appliance
> servers here.. the version I worked with
> was 5.5.1 and it worked fine but sucked with NetApps.
>>From the news, 5.6.2 is NDMP compliant
> but I have no feedback on that...
Not sure if this is a typo - 5.5.2 is the "current" version, there is no
5.6.x available yet. 5.5.2 is not available for all platforms yet.
> I've
> never seen Budtool or Veritas Netbackup,
> but I know that people started talking about
> Budtool only when it came to backing up
> NetApp filers.
I can help you a bit with the Budtool issue - Budtool has been bought by
Legato and is likely end-of-lifed.
> 2. Does the latest Networker 5.6.2 support
> Tape Library sharing (i.e can I dedicate
> say one drive in my jukebox to one server
> and another drive to another server and so on
> so that I can have SCSI based backup
> for the servers instead of network based
> backup)
I don't believe you can do this. We are running Networker 5.5.1 right
now, it is certainly NOT a capability of 5.5.1.
> 5. How good is Veritas Netbackup? I browsed the
> technical document on this and it seems to have
> all the features I want, and even more, but
> I've not worked with it so I'm not sure about
> its performance/reliability/ease of use.
To give you some idea - we're in the process of ditching Legato
Networker in favour of Veritas Netbackup. Networker has proven to be
extremely unreliable at our site, and others have had problems too. We
have experienced many instances of index corruption, for instance, which
is difficult to track down though relatively easy to fix. Legato does
have a good "disaster recovery" procedure, which is a good thing because
we've had to use it a number of times to recover from corrupted indexes.
Veritas for now seems to have leapfrogged Legato in terms of features,
and the sites we've spoken to (and visited) are extremely happy with it.
You'd asked about saving in ufsdump format - Veritas Netbackup can save
in GNU tar format, which is the next best thing - Netbackup does not
need to be present on the system to restore. If you save in GNU tar
format, you can't multiplex save sets on a tape however, so backups will
be slower - the price you pay...
Cheers,
Ross
--
Ross Parker | UNIX Sys Admin, Perl and C,
Systems/Network Admin | Networking and security
Telus Mobility |
| UNIX is very user friendly... it's just
parker@bctm.com | highly selective about who it makes friends WITH!
----------------------------------------------------
Original Post:
Hello everyone,
We're evaluating Enterprise level backup
solutions here and the three products
on table are Legato Networker, Budtool
and Veritas Netbackup. Our's is a small
environment with about 20 Solaris servers
and a couple of Network Appliance filers.
I've used Networker before and I'd go
with it if we did not have Network Appliance
servers here.. the version I worked with
was 5.5.1 and it worked fine but sucked with NetApps.
>From the news, 5.6.2 is NDMP compliant
but I have no feedback on that...I've
never seen Budtool or Veritas Netbackup,
but I know that people started talking about
Budtool only when it came to backing up
NetApp filers. Networker works fine with
Solaris Boxes.
Here're my questions:
1. How good is Budtool for backing up
Net App servers?
2. Does the latest Networker 5.6.2 support
Tape Library sharing (i.e can I dedicate
say one drive in my jukebox to one server
and another drive to another server and so on
so that I can have SCSI based backup
for the servers instead of network based
backup)
3. Does Budtool work well with Solaris boxes?
4. IS Budtool's save process compatible with
ufsdump (i.e Can I restore a Budtool backed up
filesystem using ufsrestore? I know I cannot
do that with Networker and its an important
thing to look at because if Networker's server
index crashes, recovering it using mmrecov
takes a long time and is a nightmare sometimes)
5. How good is Veritas Netbackup? I browsed the
technical document on this and it seems to have
all the features I want, and even more, but
I've not worked with it so I'm not sure about
its performance/reliability/ease of use.
Another piece of information I have is that
Budtool is slowly being intergrated into
Networker after Legato bought it, and it
will soon go away... (another reason not
to go with Budtool)...??
I'd really appreciate if you people could give
your opineons, experiences and advise.
Thanks very much in advance!
Chandra
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:14:08 CDT