berger@datacube.UUCP (04/27/87)
Has anyone had any experiences with Unitech's Ubackup?
This is a utility that supposedly is easier to administer and offload
to clearical help for doing daily full and incremental backups.
It supposidly can reliably do backups on live filesystems without failure.
It automates the management of the backup tape pool for rotating dump tapes
over time and recording where they are kept.
Ubackup has a more robust labeling mechanism of tapes and allows users to
queue up personal backups that an operator can then do in a batch mode.
It probably has other features that I can't remember off hand.
My main question is: Is it worth it compared to some simple scripts and
dump?
I am mainly looking for a more reliable, robust way of backing up live
filesystems.
Bob Berger
Datacube Inc. Systems / Software Group 4 Dearborn Rd. Peabody, Ma 01960
VOICE: 617-535-6644; FAX: (617) 535-5643; TWX: (710) 347-0125
UUCP: ihnp4!datacube!berger
{seismo,cbosgd,cuae2,mit-eddie}!mirror!datacube!bergershel@cfisun.UUCP (04/30/87)
Here at CFI we have been using UBACKUP since Feb of 87 and have become quite
pleased with it. We have a network of 12 suns (2 file servers and 5 160's
4 3/50's and 1/110) with a very distributed file system between the servers
and the 160's (we have about 25 NFS mounts at all times) so we have
a single view file system.
Ubackup has all the features you mention but let me quickly describe what we
like about it:
1) It handles our NFS file system transparantely. We run Ubackup from
one of our file servers to back up all of the disks on the network
2) It uses either tar or cpio as its tape archiving mechanism. This means
that if Ubackup blows up you can still read the tapes with normal
UNIX tools
3) Each tape is a single tar, Ubackup knows how long each tape is (you register
each available tape) so only writes what fits. (If you have used CPIO
and tried to start at the second tape of multi reel set and got a
phase error, you'll appreciate it)
4) Ubackup reads each tape after it writes it to actually create its
catalog. No more worries about if the tape is readable
5) Each available tape is labelled so you can not by operator
error overwrite an in use tape
6) You can establish an off-site backup schedule and ubackup will automatically
have you duplicate tapes
7) You can set up arbitrary recycle schedules for freeing tapes
8) It is quite simple to use. Our operators are pretty non-technical and they
only have to involke a single command to start things up.
9) Recovery can be done asynchronously. When you ask ubackup to get you
a file, it tells you which version (date etc) and if you say go ahead
it will send a message to the operator (who is defined as anyone logged
in who is identified as an operator) indicating which tape to mount. When
the operator has the tape mounted, the operator tells ubackup the tape
is up by running a reply command. After the file is recovered, you get
a mail message and the operator gets a message saying to remove the tape.
10)You can do wild card recovery. E.G. cd /u/shel;sbmrestore *.* will restore
all /u/shel/*.* files.
11)Ubackup can tell if a file it dumped changed between the time it decided
to dump it and when it was dumped and marks that fact in the catalog so
you know if a changing file was backed
12)You have full control over what is included and excluded in the backup
so you not backup up /usr /usr/man etc or anything else you want.
We are a high availability requirement site and take our backups very
seriously. We used to have a 17 page shell script which implemented
a complete towers of hanoi sequence for dumps etc. Ubackup is far
better and for the $1500 price you can't beat it (especially considering
that you only need one copy since you can backup a complete NFS network
using only one machine.)
Hope this helps.
--
Sheldon Laube, The Consumer Financial Institute, Waltham, MA 617-899-6500
{decvax!yale|allegra|ihnp4|ucbvax!cbosgd}!ima!cfisun!shel
shel@CFI.COM