lsefton@apple.com (Laurie Sefton) (09/20/89)
I'm looking at methods to back up large amounts (> 50GB) of data over a network. All of the information I've gotten so far has been on exabyte systems, and I was wondering if there was any other systems in use out there. My criteria are: 1.) Can't be using hard disk to back up hard disk 2.) media must be cheap 3.) Package must be easy to run, or can be called from crontab 4.) Recovery of single or multiple files must be as easy as possible 5.) Must have more security and/or provide more information than rdump. I will definitely take combinations of the above :-) Thanks Laurie Sefton lsefton@apple.com {amdahl,sun,ames,pyramid}!apple!lsefton disclaimer: My views, not Apple's
weber@husc6.harvard.edu (09/27/89)
When it comes to backing up >50GB there's only one game in town that meets your requirements for cheap media, cron, etc: EXABYTE. No one else has the experience or the installed base that they do, not even close. WORM is doesn't work (to me) because the media is very expensive and the max I've seen on a WORM (any formfactor) is about 2-3GB. There is about 3-4 organizations here using Exabytes for all their backups and we've had no serious problems. Just use the good media (Sony) and RTFM. The best vendor I've seen for a SW/HW package is DELTA MICRO-SYSTEMS. There are others but DELTA's is complete, it works and it's easy to install (easy is relative). I looked at ARTICON and their documentation is poor. All Exabyte hardware systems are the same inside. Various VAR's just use the box of choice w/some power supply. So what you're buying is their box, their software, and their support. We got the thing to run under 3.5 OS with some fiddling with the buffer sizes. Buffer sizing is very important to speed. You can get it to stream with the proper buffer sizes but w/o them its VERY slow. Regards, Jeff Weber