Seeking real world experiences w/Legato
2007-12-25 11:56:00
Here's my original query:
>
>
> Dear Gang,
>
> The time is rapidly approaching when this small companies' UNIX
> storage capacity will exceed the capabilities of our home-grown
> backup system. I am researching commercial backup solutions.
>
> Has anyone any experience using Legato's Networker for Sun, Network
> Edition?
>
> How 'bout a DLT 20-40 GB tape subsystem?
>
> All opinions, good and bad, would be appreciated.
>
> My world consists of SPARCs 1+ through 20s, all running Solaris
> 1.1.2 (SunOS 4.1.4).
All responses are tacked on to the end of this message. Individual
"thank you's" go to:
Pierrick Pinasseau
Stephen Harris
larry
Caleb Warner
Bill Townsley
Marc S. Gibian
Garry Robbins
Bill Townsley
David R. Steen
Alex Finkel
John C. Pavao
Kris Briscoe
Jason Boerner
John D Schneider
Bob Woodward
Simon Gibbons
Don Catey
Celeste Stokely
Rich Kulawiec mention Amanda README inclusion
Reto Lichtensteiger
Brian Styles
Gene Rackow
Patty_Hakala
Virginia Coffindaffer
In particular, Rich Kulawiec's inclusion of the Amanda README
was very useful.
Thanks also to the keepers of sun-managers mailing list.
Roger Spaulding
Network System Administrator
Ramtron International Corporation
1850 Ramtron Drive
Colorado Springs, CO 80921
FREEDOM is the power to do what I ought to do -- not the ability to
do what I want to do.
================================================================================
From: Pierrick Pinasseau <cmsadm@cmsmail.cern.ch>
all I can tell you this we use legato for sun since 1 mouth
we decided to use it after testing other software (like adsm IBM, having a
look of amanda ...) and we are very happy with it
(usefull, seems to be fast, easy to recover, made for lot of platform)
our cluster: servers, clients sun sparc2 -> enterprise 3000
media storage is jukebox dat 4 tapes.
and the support since to be good (mailing, vendor)
we decide also to use it because other people in our center
recommanded it .
have a look http://www.legato.com/ you will find lot of information.
hope that help you
P.Pinasseau
================================================================================
From: Stephen Harris <sweh@mpn.com>
> Has anyone any experience using Legato's Networker for Sun, Network
> Edition?
I'm using Networker 4.0.2 under the Sun badged label. The newer version
looks prettier, but it's basically the same.
> How 'bout a DLT 20-40 GB tape subsystem?
Yup.
> All opinions, good and bad, would be appreciated.
It's OK. Network traffic can get high when backing up a remote system
(NIS+ server can't respond in time when _other_ machines are being backed up
etc) so we got a switch instead of a hub. Then NIS+ was OK, but when the NFS
server is being backed up, it can still be slow in responding :-(
Recycling tapes can be slow..
> My world consists of SPARCs 1+ through 20s, all running Solaris
> 1.1.2 (SunOS 4.1.4).
All my machines are Solaris 2.4 or higher, Sparc 5's or Ultras.
rgds
Stephen
================================================================================
From: larry <larry@ca.cch.com>
| The time is rapidly approaching when this small companies UNIX
| storage capacity will exceed the capabilities of our home-grown
| backup system. I am researching commercial backup solutions.
|
| Has anyone any experience using Legato's Networker for Sun, Network
| Edition?
In general once it's setup and working everything is great. It
takes a little while to find your way around but it shouldn't
be too bad. The only thing is that when things mess up they
mess up *real* big. Take 2 valium and then tackle the problem.
It's been my experience also that tech support takes forever to
get back to you - not what you want when your system just had a
schizo trip and took NetWorker *and* 8 GB of your production
data with it.
=====================================================================
Larry Chin {Larry_Chin@ca.cch.com} CCH Canadian Ltd.
Phone: 416-441-4001 ext. 349 6 Garamond Court
Fax: 416-441-3544 North York, Ontario, M3C 1Z5
=====================================================================
From: cwarner@slpma8.ED.RAY.COM (Caleb Warner)
Message-Id: <199612041622.LAA09501@slpmai.ED.RAY.COM>
To: ras@ramtron.com
Subject: Re: Seeking real world experiences w/Legato
X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII
Roger,
we are using PDC's budtool as our backup software. We are using that because
it does not backup in a proprietary format. Therefore if the machine running
Legato dies, we can still retrieve files from our backup tapes.
Also we are using 27 tape Jukebox with the 20-40GB DLT tapes. It is soooo much
better than the old 8mm tapes we were using. We have been using the DLT's for
about 3 months. They have been very reliable, but we haven't been using them
for that long.
Thanks
Caleb Warner
Raytheon Company
================================================================================
From: billt@dat.com (Bill Townsley)
I am currently using Legato Network 4.2 in conjunction with a
Sun SPARCStorage Library 10 tape stacker to back up approximately
20 SPARCs. I've been very pleased with Networker. It's GUI is
intuitive, its configuration, while complex in the number of
options offered, is logical, its status messages are informative,
and its backups are valid. There are some quirks as there are
with any program, but none that make the tool unapproachable.
Also, e-mail support, which is free with purchase of the product,
usually provides me with resolution within 24 hours. I rely on
this product heavily and it has not let me down yet (1 year).
If you have any other specific questions, I'd be happy to answer
them.
================================================================================
From: gibian@stars1.hanscom.af.mil (Marc S. Gibian)
Roger,
My current customer has been running Sun's version of Networker, sold under the
Solstice Backup label, for about ten months. We don't have a jukebox or any of
those newfangled DLT drives (please excuse the drool ;-) but instead use three
4mm tape drives to get enough media online on our server to run unattended
backups every night. I use a schedule that performs one full on every system
every week, rotating through four week-long sets of tapes. Ideally one set would
be stored off-site and rotated once a week, but we've had logistics problems
setting that part up. Otherwise, I've been very pleased.
I should mention I also ran the Digital version, I think they now call it
Polycenter Save and Restore, for a couple of years. That worked quite nicely as
well.
Let me know if there's anything more you wish to know...
-Marc
Marc S. Gibian
================================================================================
From: Garry Robbins <Garry.Robbins@labatt.com>
> Has anyone any experience using Legato's Networker for Sun, Network
> Edition?
>
> How 'bout a DLT 20-40 GB tape subsystem?
We've been using Networker with the 10-client licences
on several servers since we upgraded to Solaris 2 several
years ago.
We have SUN 4mm DAT stackers which hold 4 5G tapes,
although with compression, sparse files may get
well over 5G per tape.
Product works fine. Multiple file systems can be
backed up simultaneously. Restores as expected.
"Bootstrap printouts" are annoying. Documentation
says we absolutely must keep them, but we've
recovered complete systems from tapes without them.
Only real gripe is with the single-client license
that ships with Solaris, but you're not asking
about it.
--
Garry D. Robbins
================================================================================
From: steen@deimos.kodak.com (David x76353/RDCS/8-23-KP)
I have been using the Networker product from Legato for about 3 years now.
It is in use on several of our servers. We backup over 250 workstations nightly
to two SPARC20's each connected to a EXA-BYTE EXB480 jukebox. We also
have several DLT-4000 jukeboxes running on other servers.
On one of the DLT-4000 servers we backup over 40Gbytes to two DLT's in about
4-5hr. Using only 1 tape in each jukebox.
I have not had much success using the Soltice Backup product that SUN bundles
with the SOlaris nowdays. It is not configurable enough to allow for use on
more than a single NFS server machine, it allows only single client usage.
David R. Steen
================================================================================
From: Alex Finkel <afinkel@pfn.com>
I think Legato is a great product. My only objections with Legato have to
do with pricing. The software is not cheap and they charge you for every
module, so for example if you buy an autochanger or tape library you need
to purchase the module that lets legato control it. If you want to add
desktop clients (Wintel, Mac, OS/2) you have to purchase that module which
does not include node licenses, just the software. Also, their support
contracts are 10%-15% of the cost of the software per year - a bit steep
considering the cost.
Having said that, consider what your data is worth to you and how quickly
you want to be able to perform backups and restores. Legato really earns
it's keep when you need to get back a file from a previous backup. Because
it keeps an online index, you can have a file back in a matter of minutes.
You will need to dedicate at least 5% of your total disk space to the
index, which is not a bad trade off for the convenience.
If you have specific questions, e-mail me and I'll try to be more specific.
- Alex
================================================================================
From: "John C. Pavao" <pavaojc@rixix.sod.eds.com>
Howdy. We use it on an Exabyte jukebox and we love it. SA used to mean no
sleep until we installed Networker. We have had remarkably few backup
problems since. It gets my vote!
John Pavao
================================================================================
From: hxktb0@svho1nfs_1.supervalu.com (Kris Briscoe)
I have had lots of experience with Sun and Legato...It works great under 1.x. I
have also worked with 1.x, epoc, and the DLT's. Talk to sun about using legato
and their stacker for 8mm or 4mm. Let me know if I can answer anything else.
Regards,
Kris
================================================================================
From: Jason Boerner <jboerne@uswest.com>
I have Netorker and I HATE it!!! I find that while the product is VERY
complete, it is also VERY tough to setup and expensive. The Licensing
scheme that they use is a real pain and has directly led to many months
of delays and agrivation. I just now have the product in a state where I
feel as though I can put it through it's paces.
Good luck..
================================================================================
From: jdschn@dilbert.monsanto.com (John D Schneider)
Roger,
We are currently backing up about 80 Suns, RS/6000s, DEC Alpha's, and SGI
machines using Networker on two Sun Sparc servers. Both use DLT drives. We have
been very happy with the quality of the software.
John
================================================================================
From: Bob Woodward <bobw@kramer.filmworks.com>
That's EXACTALLY what we're in the process of going to! We've been using
Networker Single-Server from Sun (repackaged Legato software) and I've been
having a devil of a time with the authorization of the software. I like
the Legato software and I looked at A LOT of different solutions on tape
drives. We ended up getting the best price from Gigatrend on the whole
package.
Problem I'm having with the authorization codes is that it keeps wanting to
revert back to the original install date and wanting an UPDATE enabler code
instead of the new-install enabler code that came with the software.
Haven't been able to get a backup since Thanksgiving because of this and
our internet provider cutting us off on the DNS service. Just got DNS
fixed today so it's back to figuring out Networker.
================================================================================
From: Simon Gibbons <simong@aifs.org.au>
Hi Roger,
We've been using Legato Networker on 6 Unix machines for several years.
It has been reliable and easy to use. The support is generally quite
good, however we have had to solve one or two problems ourselves. My
boss is from the old school and would rather that we had a ufsdump and
restore script, but I think he's coming around to this new fangled stuff
- an indication that it's a reliable product.
Regards,
Simon
================================================================================
From: catey@wren.geg.mot.com (Don Catey)
I'm running Legato (aka Solstice Backup) now, but not by choice. In my former
job we were using BudTool from PDC and I miss it.
I'll do a quick pro's and con's:
Solstice Backup Pro's:
Free with Solaris 2.5 server bundle
Allows parallel backups to the same backup server
Old backup cycles can be removed from the indexes
Has ASCII interface (like ufsrestore/restore)
Solstice Backup Con's:
Uses proprietary method of writing data to tape (ie you MUST use
Networker to retrieve data)
Index files can grow very large very quickly
BudTool Pro's:
Uses standard unix commands to perform backups
Indexes are small
BudTool Con's:
No ASCII interface, must issuse commands by hand
Old backup cycles cannot be purged from the index
Of course there are many more things about each, but these are the big ones to
me.
Legato is not "bad". It has been reliable for me, and I like the ASCII
interface. (I think PDC was adding something similar to BudTool). Maybe I'm
just biased about BudTool because I know it better?
================================================================================
From: celeste@celestial.stokely.com (Celeste Stokely)
I've used Legato at client sites successfully for many network backup
implementations. I've also installed and used several DLT jukeboxes
at client sites, though never have used a lone DLT drive (non-jukebox).
The Networker I've used is for Solaris 2.x, and the DLT jukes were for
NT and Solaris 2.x. I don't have experience with DLTs on 4.x, so check out
the various DLT Sun-connection FAQs I have linked to from:
http://www.stokely.com/unix.sysadm.resources/disk.printing.html
(Halvard Halvorsen't cookbook goes into the SunOS setup.)
They each take some time to learn and properly set up before they can
be relied on, but can work extremely well.
People are often surprised by how long it takes to really learn Networker,
but it pays off. Set aside a large disk to hold Legato's indices.
================================================================================
From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk@itw.com>
>Has anyone any experience using Legato's Networker for Sun, Network Edition?
Yes. As long as everything is peachy (tapes are okay, indices are
undisturbed, etc.) life is fine. But if anything goes wrong, you're...
well, to put it bluntly, you're screwed.
I was one of a group of people who were tasked to find a company-wide
Unix backup solution at <major aerospace company>. We look at Networker,
and SM:Arch, and BudTool, and other tools. There are a *lot* of problems
with each of these, which can more-or-less be boiled down to: they use
proprietary methods, not dump/restore; some rely on arcane database
structures that are too fragile; some have licensing/pricing structures
that are unattractive; and most of them try very, very hard to solve
problems that aren't issues for most people (i.e. backups on live
filesystems, which are usually cited as the bogey monster). Unless you
are doing some highly specialized things (dozens of restores a day,
or backups of machines engaged in real-time transaction processing)
they're overkill.
I'd say that it's well worth your time to take a look at Amanda,
which is a pretty darn smart system done up by the people at UMD.
I'm enclosing the README from the latest distribution below.
It might also be the case that Amanda's overkill for you; if so, let
me know, and I'll drop you the perl-ized beta version of my extremely
simple-minded backup system (I'm converting it from C). It uses a
simple ASCII config file to run a series of "dump" commands; I've used
it to back up as many as 200 hosts and 400 filesystems on 8 tapedrives.
> How 'bout a DLT 20-40 GB tape subsystem?
They're awfully nice....I want one. Nice high transfer rates, great
seek times, and they seem reliable enough that I'd trust my data to them.
The downside: they're expensive, and don't have the proven track record
of 4mm and 8mm.
---Rsk
==========
README:
==========
Amanda, The Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver
Copyright (c) 1991, 1995 University of Maryland at College Park
All Rights Reserved.
See the file COPYRIGHT for distribution conditions and official warranty
disclaimer.
Amanda 2.3.0 ALPHA RELEASE NOTES - May 19, 1996
-----------------------------------------------
The latest version of Amanda is always available via anonymous ftp
from ftp.cs.umd.edu in the directory /pub/amanda.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS SOFTWARE IS BEING MADE AVAILABLE ``AS-IS''. UMD is making
this work available so that other people can use it. This software is in
production use at our home site - the UMCP Department of Computer Science -
but we make no warranties that it will work for you. Amanda development is
unfunded - the author maintains the code in his spare time. As a result,
there is no support available other than users helping each other on the
amanda-users mailing list. See below for information on the mailing lists.
WHAT'S NEW SINCE 2.2.6?
-----------------------
* A number of material bugs fixed, including fixes incorporated into John
Stoffel's WPI patches to amanda, which he called 2.2.6.5.
* Backup files larger than 2 GB now supported. The current limit is 2^31
Kbytes (2 terabytes), which should hold us for a few more years (1/2 :-).
* Support for GNUTAR-based backups.
* Support for writing to multiple tapes (sequentially) in one run.
* Support for multiple backups in parallel from the same client host.
* Records from the curinfo database can be exported and imported to/from a
textual format. This allows fixing a corrupted database by running the
text version through a script and reimporting it. Individual records or
the entire database can be exported/imported.
More details for these new features can be found in docs/WHATS.NEW.
WHAT'S LEFT TO DO FOR AMANDA 2.3?
---------------------------------
* Release engineering and porting on many platforms.
* Update and extend the documentation.
* Archival dumps via "skip-incr" are not doing the right thing.
* Pick many little nits.
* Probably lots of other things.
WHAT'S NEW SINCE 2.2.5?
-----------------------
* A number of material bugs fixed.
* A lot of lint picked in the whole package.
* The documentation is now reasonably up to date.
* This version has been locally compiled and at least the client side tested
on the following systems:
SunOS 4.1.3 IRIX 5.2
Solaris 2.3 BSDI BSD/386 1.1
Ultrix 4.2 NetBSD 1.0
DEC OSF/1 2.0 AIX 3.2
I don't have any HP/UX machines locally to try it on, but I've tracked
patches submitted by Neal Becker <neal@ctd.comset.com>, so I'm reasonably
confident that 2.2.6 shouldn't be far from the mark on that platform.
WHAT'S NEW SINCE 2.1?
---------------------
Many things have changed since Amanda 2.1. Here are the major items:
* SYSV shared memory no longer required on server side if mmap is available.
* Supports GZIP compression.
* Supports use of mount names as well as device names in disk list
(eg "/usr" instead of "sd0g").
* Amanda now thinks in real-time - you may run it several times a day if
you wish, and it won't get confused.
* Supports Kerberos 4 security as well as BSD-style .rhosts, including
encrypting files over the net. The Kerberos support is available as a
separate add-on package - see the file KERBEROS.HOW-TO-GET on the ftp
site.
* Improved network protocol - faster startup, no longer dump specific,
hooks in place for non-dump clients.
* Client-side checks in amcheck - can check sanity of all client hosts very
quickly.
* Supports multiple holding disks, and load balances between them.
More details are available in docs/WHATS.NEW.
WHAT IS AMANDA?
---------------
This is an alpha-test release of Amanda, the Advanced Maryland Automatic
Network Disk Archiver. Amanda is a backup system designed to archive many
computers on a network to a single large-capacity tape drive. This release
is currently in daily use at the University of Maryland at College Park
Computer Science Department, backing up all the disks on all the
workstations in the department: currently over 70 gigabytes of data across
more than 400 filesystems on more than 146 workstations and servers, using
a single 5 Gigabyte Exabyte EXB-8500. Here are some features of Amanda:
* written in C, freely distributable.
* built on top of standard backup software: BSD Unix dump/restore, and
later GNU Tar and others.
* will back up multiple machines in parallel to a holding disk, blasting
finished dumps one by one to tape as fast as we can write files to
tape. For example, a ~2 Gb 8mm tape on a ~240K/s interface to a host
with a large holding disk can be filled by Amanda in under 4 hours.
* does simple tape management: will not overwrite the wrong tape.
* supports tape changers via a generic interface. Easily customizable to
any type of tape carousel, robot, or stacker that can be controlled via
the unix command line.
* supports Kerberos 4 security, including encrypted dumps. The Kerberos
support is available as a separate add-on package, see the file
KERBEROS.HOW-TO-GET on the ftp site, and the file docs/KERBEROS in this
package, for more details.
* for a restore, tells you what tapes you need, and finds the proper
backup image on the tape for you.
* recovers gracefully from errors, including down or hung machines.
* reports results, including all errors in detail, in email to operators.
* will dynamically adjust backup schedule to keep within constraints: no
more juggling by hand when adding disks and computers to network.
* includes a pre-run checker program, that conducts sanity checks on both
the tape server host and all the client hosts (in parallel), and will
send an e-mail report of any problems that could cause the backups to
fail.
* can compress dumps before sending over net, with either compress or gzip.
* can optionally syncronize with external backups, for those large
timesharing computers where you want to do full dumps when the system
is down in single-user mode (since BSD dump is not reliable on active
filesystems): Amanda will still do your daily dumps.
* lots of other options; Amanda is very configurable.
WHAT ARE THE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR AMANDA?
--------------------------------------------
Amanda requires a host that is mostly idle at night, with a large capacity
tape drive (e.g. an EXABYTE or DAT tape). This becomes the "tape server
host". All the computers you are going to dump are the "backup client
hosts". The server host can also be a client host.
Amanda works best with one or more large "holding disk" partition on the
server host available to it for buffering dumps before writing to tape.
The holding disk allows Amanda to run backups in parallel to the disk, only
writing them to tape when the backup is finished. Note that the holding
disk is not required: without it Amanda will run backups sequentially to
the tape drive. Running it this way kills the great performance, but still
allows you to take advantage of Amanda's other features.
As a rule of thumb, for best performance the holding disk should be larger
than the dump output from your largest disk partitions. For example, if
you are backing up some full gigabyte disks that compress down to 500 MB,
then you'll want 500 MB on your holding disk. On the other hand, if those
gigabyte drives are partitioned into 500 MB filesystems, they'll probably
compress down to 250 MB and you'll only need that much on your holding
disk. Amanda will perform better with larger holding disks. We use 800 MB
for our holding disk.
Actually, Amanda will still work if you have full dumps that are larger
than the holding disk: Amanda will send those dumps directly to tape one at
a time. If you have many such dumps you will be limited by the dump speed
of those machines.
WHAT SYSTEMS DOES AMANDA RUN ON?
--------------------------------
Amanda should run on any modern Unix system that supports dump, has sockets
and inetd, and either system V shared memory, or BSD mmap implemented.
In particular, Amanda 2.3.0 has been compiled, and the client side tested
on the following systems:
SunOS 4.1.3 IRIX 5.2
SunOS 5.5 BSDI BSD/OS 2.1
Ultrix 4.2 NetBSD 1.0
DEC OSF/1 3.2 AIX 3.2
We only run the server side under SunOS 4.1.3, but it compiles on all those
platforms, and I have no reason at this time to beleive it will not work.
In addition, I have tracked patches for the following systems that we don't
run in house:
FreeBSD
Linux
HP/UX
NextStep
HOW DO I GET AMANDA UP AND RUNNING?
-----------------------------------
docs/INSTALL contains general installation instructions.
docs/SYSTEM.NOTES contains system-specific information.
docs/KERBEROS explains installation under Kerberos 4.
docs/TAPE.CHANGERS explains how to customize the changer interface.
docs/WHATS.NEW details new features.
WHO DO I TALK TO IF I HAVE A PROBLEM?
-------------------------------------
Amanda is completely unsupported and made available as-is. Unfortunately,
I just don't have the time to answer all user questions and help all new
sites get started.
I do maintain the following mailing lists for those interested in Amanda:
==> To join a mailing list, DO NOT, EVER, send mail to that list. Send
mail to <listname>-request@cs.umd.edu, or amanda-lists@cs.umd.edu, with
the following line in the body of the message:
subscribe <listname> <your-email-address>
amanda-announce
The amanda-announce mailing list is for important announcements
related to the Amanda Network Backup Manager package, including new
versions, contributions, and fixes. NOTE: the amanda-users list is
itself on the amanda-announce distribution, so you only need to
subscribe to one of the two lists, not both.
To subscribe, send a message to amanda-announce-request@cs.umd.edu.
amanda-users
The amanda-users mailing list is for questions and general discussion
about the Amanda Network Backup Manager. This package and related
files are available via anonymous FTP from ftp.cs.umd.edu in the
pub/amanda directory. NOTE: the amanda-users list is itself on the
amanda-announce distribution, so you only need to subscribe to one of
the two lists, not both.
To subscribe, send a message to amanda-users-request@cs.umd.edu.
amanda-hackers
The amanda-hackers mailing list is for discussion of the
technical details of the Amanda package, including extensions,
ports, bugs, fixes, and alpha testing of new versions.
To subscribe, send a message to amanda-hackers-request@cs.umd.edu.
================================================================================
From: Reto Lichtensteiger <rali@meitca.com>
Roger Spaulding wrote:
<> Has anyone any experience using Legato's Networker for Sun, Network
<> Edition?
<>
<> How 'bout a DLT 20-40 GB tape subsystem?
Yup ... Using Legato to back up a 170GB Auspex + assorted other Sun, NT
and Mac servers ... Been using it since 1994 (Legato v 4.0). No
hiccups, no errors (Well, except the damned NT boxes and who cares about
them ...?)
You might want to ask on the Networker under Unix mailing list:
networker@iphase.com (List is run via MajorDomo, but isn't a closed
list)
<> My world consists of SPARCs 1+ through 20s, all running Solaris
<> 1.1.2 (SunOS 4.1.4).
And a good world it is ... :-)
Reto
================================================================================
From: Brian Styles <brian.styles@mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk>
We use our own hand-rolled backup software, on the grounds that it's
the devil you know. But it's a matter of taste. I can give you more
details if you like.
As for your question about DLT, don't hesitate - it's superb. We've
used Exabytes of all kinds, since the first one came out, as well as
QUIC-150 and other antiques, DAT. By the way, the Sun "14GB" Exabyte
is a joke - its compressor is most unlikely to give you a 2:1
score, unlike the Peripheral Vision variety. And we had a very painful
experience with the Exabyte stacker ("tape library system") from Sun.
Eventually, they took it back, after considerable loss of time and
temper, they admitted it was a lemon. You'd get write errors, dropped
tapes, sometimes the same tape picked up twice (disaster!). The DLT
(get the Sun-badged model which is basically 20GB plus compression -
then you can have it on support) is just superb. I've yet to see a
single error, and that's on experience of four drives which, between
them, move over 120GB of data per week. And they're very fast - we
wee speeds of about three times what we got on Exabytes. For instance,
on a pair of drives, running in parallel, 50-odd GB will get done in
about 3 hrs.
Oh, you might have kernel problems under Sol1... Be sure there's a
patch.
Good luck!
-Brian
================================================================================
From: Gene Rackow <rackow@mcs.anl.gov>
>From everything I have seen, there isn't a commercial package that can
stand up to the capabilities of amanda. We've been using it for quite some
time now on several hundred gig of disk. The current version of amanda is
available from ftp.gps.caltech.edu in /pub/amanda
It works very well on SunOS as well as AIX, IRIX, FreeBSD, and several others.
You can add your choice of tape drive to the system. There are people
using DLT drives, though so far I do not.
The natural home for amanda is ftp.cs.umd.edu:/pub/amanda. There are mailing
lists for people as well.
================================================================================
From: Patty_Hakala@smtpgw.access.com
Roger,
I would have replied to your question about legato sooner, but I was fixing
our Legato server.
We use Legato Networker 4.2.5 to back up about 20 servers, mostly Solaris
2.3-2.5 and a few running SunOS 4.1.3, and a few NT servers. Our hardware is a
Exabyte 480 jukebox with 80 slots and 4 EXB8505 8mm tape drives, and a Exabyte
210 juke box with 10 slots.
In short, when Legato works, it works beautifully and easily. A couple of
clicks and a few minutes later, you've labelled a tape. You set up automatic
backups and when you come in the morning all the backups are done and all is
right with the world. You click a few more times, wait a few minutes and you
recovered a file.
The hard parts are setting up and the upgrades. There are so many things that
could go wrong. Legato technical support is slow to respond and not always
helpful. The manuals are not as useful as they could be. But the web site has
lots of good information and updates.
Legato could work well for a small site such as your self, but here are my
recommendations:
1. Only have one or two people who control backups and recoveries and the
jukebox. It is so easy to confuse the software if more than one person try to
access the jukebox, or the software.
2. You MUST have dumps of the OS as well. In order for Legato to recover a
file system, the legato software has to be installed. For example, you lose the
hard drive with the root partition on homeserver. You can only boot it from
cdrom. You can't recover from Legato because you have to run it from the
machine. At this point you would have to recover from the dump to be able to
boot the machine and then install Legato and then run it to recover the files.
We do 0 level dumps on our servers about once a month.
3. There are some incompatibilities with Legato and Unicenter. I don't know
more about this except that it took a little work for these two to be on the
same machine.
4. Be patient. Working with tapes does not give immediate satisfaction. Let
the tape drive finish what it was doing before you try and do something else.
Sorry for the incoherent rambling. Hope this helps.
================================================================================
From: "Coffindaffer, Virginia@MacPO1" <CoffindafferVirginia@wangfed.com>
I have loads of experience with Solstice Backup using a DLT 40 GB tape
(compressed) but only using Solaris 2.5.1 working on a Ultra 5000. We
saved
6 GB in 25 minutes I believe without compression. I am very impressed
with
the speed but some of this speed is coming from the FAST Ultra 5000. and
disk
and tape speeds are faster using Solaris 2.5.x.
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