[comp.protocols.appletalk] Backup via network, request for info.

news@comp.vuw.ac.nz (News Admin) (06/09/89)

    I posted this request for information about two weeks ago with no reply
from the net.  It is possible that my posting went to the bit bucket so I
am reposting it.  I apologise if you have seen this already.
--

    We have recently invested in a campus wide network.  At the moment 
the network is Ethernet running on optical fibre, in the future we hope 
to upgrade this to FDDI.

    One of the services we hope to offer users of the network is remote
backup of their personal computers, file-servers, departmental computers 
etc, onto our central machine(s) with disk farm(s) attatched.  

*Question*:  Is there any software out in netland that exists, or is being 
developed that does this sort of thing?  

    Software using TCP/IP would be of the most interest to us, however info. 
on any software would be appreciated.  If there is no software out there at 
all we are considering developing the software.

*Questions*:  If we were to develop our own software, what functions, apart 
from full and partial backup/restore, would people like to see in such a 
system?  Are there other people/organisations, out there, who would be 
interested in a backup system like this?

    If we were to "roll our own" the intitial environment would probably 
be a Unix server backing up, Macs on appletalk via Kinetics/Multigate, IBM PC
clones and Unix workstations on Ethernet.
    Software that we know about is by Dan Tappan, at BBN Corporate Computer
Resource Centre.  This software backs up a Mac via a Kinetics FastPath 
bridge to a Unix machine running CAP.
    Replies via email please.  If there is enough response I will post a
summary.  Many thanks in advance ...

Tony Martindale                            Computing Services Centre,
Domain: tony@rata.vuw.ac.nz                Victoria University of Wellington,
Path: ...!uunet!vuwcomp!rata!tony          P.O. Box 600,
Tel: +64 4 721-000  Fax: +64 4 712-070     Wellington, New Zealand.