IT Dork question: Backup Software

[mbryson]

Backing up an AD Windoze 2003 server.

I want on shore tech support instead of dealing with all the fun elements offshore. (poor call back time, comprehension issues, attitude, etc.)

What are the propeller heads on here using? Do I dare use "Windoze Backup" (not really, but ????)?

Oh, and I'm backing up about 600 Gig of data to a Exabyte LTO tape carousel.

 

[MattL]

I use brightstor 11.5 sp2
its alright.
the support is not on this side of the hemisphere but it isnt to bad.
problem i have with them is I cant fully understand what they ask some times.

they tend to have better call back times recently.
been using them for a long time though.

I got almost 2 terabytes with a spectralogic bullfrog with two ait drives.

the thing i hate about ca is their support site. that place could use a revamping. and also their caz compression utility.

 

[Caleb]

we use BRU because it can do almost any platform. It's awesome how it works and how easy it is. In our oldest building (still not very old) we are using Retrospect, in short, it sucks compared to BRU.

www.tolisgroup.com

You will want to get a license for Open File Manager if you are backing up Windowz machines. We run ours at one location on a G4 Power Mac, at another location a G5 Power Mac, and the last location (that runs retrospect) will be on a new Intel Xserve Between the two current locations we are backing up in the neighborhood of 1TB-1.5TB each day/night. Right now we go to a 16 tape library at each location but a nice Xserve-RAID is in the works and use the tapes for archiving.

 

[Brad]

I use Tivoli here but we're talking about 250TB backups. For your range/scope of backup, I prefer Brightstor Arcserve over Veritas Backupexec. BE is a bit more user friendly, but not nearly as stable/reliable in my experience as AS. Forget about DDT strategies with BE, a single backup will leave you with a drive array that's 99% fragmented. I worked closely with Veritas engineers to develop a fix implementing preallocated writes but all that work was scrapped when Symantec bought them out. To this day the problem has not been solved.

FWIW, at home I use Windows Backup to a 160GB SDLT, and that works surprisingly well for my purposes. I'd love for the OSD crowd to get behind a home backup software robust enough to support tape drives and libraries, yet simple enough to encourage it's actual routine use.

 

[78mitsu]

Backing up an AD Windoze 2003 server.

I want on shore tech support instead of dealing with all the fun elements offshore. (poor call back time, comprehension issues, attitude, etc.)

What are the propeller heads on here using? Do I dare use "Windoze Backup" (not really, but ????)?

Oh, and I'm backing up about 600 Gig of data to a Exabyte LTO tape carousel.

TAR?

actually all but a couple of our systems are freebsd, we use multilevel dumps to an nfs mounted 15TB disk array, We have a really cool system that alarms you if there isn't a current backup, on our windows systems we're scrapping out Veritas Backup Exec this year, it's just too flaky and that's not something you want on backups.

We're working through the details now of using Xen to do guest OS hosting of our windows boxes on a linux box so we can use the same backup strategy. -TAR keepin' it simple.