reading%uinta.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Dan L. Reading) (11/02/90)
[This post is intended to be a survey. It is not a product announcement, cause I don't have a product.] From the sysadm-list mailing list; >Problem 3: >---------- >Like many other people we use a number of Exabyte 8mm tapestations >for backup. I guess it's the same basic problem for all. If you >use dump and store a number of partitions you'll need to a good >recover/restore program to handle it. > Are there still sites struggling with 9-track tapes for backups? Anyone with more then 2 machines not written their own backup programs? I put a lot of effect into a backup system, maybe it should benefit others. It has (off the top of head) the following features: Centralized network backups Automatic unattended operation One Master machine W/tape-drives, which can also use tape drives on other machines Simultaneous client backups (depending on number of tape drives available) Originally designed for Exabyte 8mm, but will support DAT, 1/4" cartridge, and nine-track. Master does not have to trust client machines, client needs to trust master [ie. Client does not need to be in master's /.rhosts file.] Catalog of all save tapes Online index of backed up files (if you have space to store it) Internally and externally labeled tapes with verification before overwriting Directory of tape contents kept on each tape [backup for the online copy] Multiple machines and dumps per tape Dump size estimation so EOT is never hit OS support for: BSD Sun NeXT SGI Apollo AIX3.x HP-UX (and coming soon MacOS) Dump formats: BSD-dump Cpio Apollo-WBAK Restores can happen on any machine (except Apollo's, which must be read by an Apollo) Mutiple incremental and full save levels, with defaults Monitoring of current status Retry support for down machines, network problems, and machines that hang/crash/reboot during save Real-time trouble reporting system, summary report at end of save Handles large filesytems (1.2G is our largest filesystem) Backup granularity is per filesystem (restore is per file) Operator interface to index database and restore programs Automatic full dump when incremental gets too large Flexibly, do special dumps on arbitrary machine/filesystem This system is in daily use. It was on it's first legs fall of '88 and took over all backups in the CS department Summer of '89. Currenly we have 339 8mm tapes in our backup library. [This is because we decided not to reuse full dump tapes and keep them permanently.] We currently backup 102 machines nightly. The monthly full save runs ~24G, we are increasing about 1G/month. It would need to be cleaned up before I would release it. Is anyone interested? If enough people are interested, we could clean it up & distribute it for a small fee (<$300 per copy). Finally, would anyone be willing to volunteer to be a beta test site? [I personally would be apprehensive being a test site for backup software.] -- Dan Reading reading@cs.utah.edu reading@cs.utah.edu
greg@lawnet.LawNet.Com (Gregory G. Petersen) (11/05/90)
In article <1990Nov2.074221.26193@hellgate.utah.edu> reading%uinta.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Dan L. Reading) writes: >[This post is intended to be a survey. It is not a product >announcement, cause I don't have a product.] > [long statement about a fairly attractive backup to tape program deleted] I have read the long statement and while the writer is apparently sincere a request for $300.00 makes this a product for sale regardless of what one may think contrary. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gregory G. Petersen, Esq. Voice: (714) 938-1700 greg@lawnet.LawNet.Com Petersen & Trott Fax: (714) 938-1787 1428 E. Chapman Avenue A Law Corporation Orange, Calif 92666-2205