From: RichGlazier@netscape.net
Date: Sat Feb 15 2003 - 18:45:15 EST
Thank you for all your great responses. This was exactly what I was looking for. There was really no common thread, so it's a little hard for me to sum it up. I'll just attach everyones full responses for anyone who is interested.
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ORIGINAL MESSAGE
Tru64 Users,
I have been entertaining vendor presentations for Backup and Recovery, and would like anyone’s thoughts on particular platforms. I posed this question to the group about 9 months ago, but the backup plan got postponed. I have narrowed it down to Legato Networker, Veritas Netbackup, and CommVault Galaxy.
This will be to backup a Tru64 Unix 5.1 environment (not clustered) on the SAN (HSG80s). Some servers will be migrating to HP/UX in the next several months.
Any thoughts are greatly appreciated. I'm just looking for general impressions about the product, service, and support.
Thanks,
Rich
I'm running NetWorker to backup my Tru64 & Solaris servers. It's worked very well for us. Once you have everything set up it runs smoothly with little intervention.
I see two downsides to it though:
1) It has a steep learning curve. It is extremely flexible which comes in handy but it also means there are a lot of knobs to twist. It's fine once you're up to speed but painful at first. It also make training other admins more difficult.
2) The GUI can be pretty limiting in some circumstances. I've setup Networker at a couple of sites and I always end up writing a couple of scripts to get it working just right. Of course this is a plus if you like writing scripts....
Good luck in your project. By the way, have you considered Enterprise Backup from Computer Associates? They gave us a demo last week and it looked pretty good.
Izzit Erags
Hi,
I've used both Legato and Veritas for backups. They are both excellent
products. I'd have to say that Legato has been very simplistic over the
years, the interface has not changed much. But that's because it was
done run to begin with. As for Veritas, it has not been until the
current verion 4.5, that I would recommended it, simply because of the
bugs and lack of features found in products like Legato. What I would
do is ask for a demo license for both products and see which one you
feel comfortable with.
-Octave
There is a new backup product from HP, I believe it's called "OmniBack" but I may be mistaken, and it will support both HP-UX and Tru64 UNIX/TruCluster and will also eventually support the HSG80 stuff when it's supported in HP-UX. You might want to investigate it.
Tom
Hi Richard
As far as difficult to work with and expensive - it's Legato.
As far as ease of use but expensive - it's Netbackup
HP Omniback v5 is easy to use and does both HP-UX and Tru64
Don't know about Galaxy.
If it's pure backups then vdump/vrestore for Tru64 or fbackup/frecover for
HP-UX - either way create one generic script which handles mounted file
systems/filesets and replaces the backup command for each version of unix.
If money is no object then choose the one that has the easiest backup job
setup and best restore/recovery/drp recovery method.
Regards
Peter Gergen
We went with Netbackup for our mixed Tru64/Windows/SAN/shared-tape-drive
needs, mostly on the basis of price (Veritas was willing to work with our
budget, while Netbackup wasn't).
For the most part, it works well. The killer problem we sometimes run into
is when the Removable Storage Manager service gets started on one of the
Windows servers and it starts putting it's fingers all over the shared tape
drives. That's more of a Windows issue rather than a Netbackup issue.
I've done considerable work on recovering Tru64 systems from Netbackup, and
I've managed to come up with a bootable CD and scripts that can quickly, and with a minimum of intervention, recover a system from "bare metal".
We're running V3.4; I've got the current V4.5 sitting in a box here.
We have another group here using Legato Networker. From casual discussions I get the impression that there's not a lot of difference in the level of
problems with either product, although they're not sharing tape drives
amongst servers.
- Bluejay Adametz
I strongly suggest, in the order given, the following products:
Veritas Netbackup (with Vaulting and Global Data Manager features)
Legato Networker (with AlphaStore feature)
I have been working on this issue in an environment of several hundred
servers (about 65% Tru64, the rest Sun and AIX). Veritas has the most
mature development process, better support systems (both human and
web-based), and is the most readily tailored to a large and complex
installation.
Legato is a very strong product as well, but does not show the development
dedication in the core product that I would like to see.
I stress the usefulness (almost indespensability) of the suggested
associated
products along with whatever other modules may be appropriate to your
installation,
because they are necessary to the assurance of the key to all real backup
plans: volume lifecycle management. Without these products you will spend a
staggering amount of time scripting to simulate their function. More of your time than
you now know will be spent trying to recreate a usable scripted version of what amounts to a volume-level accounting system. We have not purchased these product modules and now are faced with doing justt that ... and in our case we have not just these two (Veritas and Legato) but two others as well (Tivoli and Syncsort Backup
Express.)
So my suggestion is that you buy one of these two but be sure, whatever you
buy, include as many global management and media management tools as are
available or you will be up at wierd hours of the night hacking away at shell scripts programming your own tools. Backup is easy. Assured restoration is not.
Cheers,
Michael Acklin
We have been using Legato in the same environment for 5 months and have no complaints.
J Bacher
We're a Legato NetWorker shop. I am the manager of our enterprise backup
system. We run our backup server ona modest AlphaServer DS20, but intend to soon migrate to a Sun Enterprise 450. Our largest server that we back up is a Tru64 5.1a cluster with around 3TB of data. We also back up a hodge podge of other servers including a few dozen Novell Netware systems, Winblows 2000/NT, and miscellaneous Solaris servers.
Legato works well for us, but its not cheap and it requires a learning
curve. That's probably true of the other options you're considering.
Although I have not seen Tivoli before, I have heard good things about it so you might want to also include it in your research.
Let me know if you have any questions about Legato NetWorker. I also
manage a fairly busy NetWorker mailing list that has about 2,000
subscribers spread across several countries. The list is at
http://listmail.temple.edu/archives/networker.html
You might also want to take a look at the http://www.backupcentral.com web site for information on this subject.
Stan Horwitz
Never heard of CommVault Galaxy. I found out today that Veritas Netbackup apparently uses gnutar which allows you to restore from tape without needing to install the netbackup utilities (I've been told it was fairly easy once they got veritas to work it out. Veritas had to be included due to the headers it writes to the tape.). It also allows you to pull give someone not using veritas but who has the tar functionality (and probably dd) and retrieve the data. This is very handy when a client wants a copy of their data but not running veritas. I don't know how important that is to you but it's very important to me.
Not a big fan of legato as they use some kind of proprietary format that requires you to run legato to pull it off the tape which is damn annoying when you decide to drop them in favor of a different vendor.
I'm rather partial to Amanda myself, though but I don't get to make that call here.
=G=
We use Veritas Netbackup here, and honestly, it sucks. Worst backup
software I have ever used. We backup a good mix of Tru64,Linux, Novell
and NT, to a massive Tape robot/lubrary, and probably half the time the
backuyps don't work, or the restores fail, and their client does all the
time, in fact it dies so frequently, we have a cron job setup to start
it backup if it's not running..
Just my 2cents.
Cheers,
We have Veritas Enterprise backup running successfully (albeit somewhat
fragile) in 3 large data centers across 150 unix systems - mix of Tru64,
HP-UX, AIX and one or two Solaris boxes. It is a really bear to get
installed and running right (make sure all your firmware is up to date!)
But, it does what it says!
BW
Robert Willis
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