Hi there, I have some questions related to Backing up systems and need comments from experts. 1.Has someone experienced a full disaster recovery of W2k server from crash ?? I would like to know the backup software and the method used. 2.would like to know what different solutions are available for backup ?Which softwares besides Veritas can be considered for Corporate backups ? Any comparisons of those? 3.What different Tape Drive Hardware is supported by Veritas ? Which is the best to select ? Are there any web sites/ forums which discuss this points in detail. 4. I am told that HP has some good backup solutions which are placed against Veritas. Any one got ideas ? I have to select right solution for my corporate , hence these questions. Pl. guide me. Thanks

The only server-based backup s/w I've used apart from Backup Exec is Arcserve 2000, as we support several offices which use this. In most caes they use HP or Seagate drives, typically DDS-3 which has a max capacity of 12gig uncompressed or 24 gig compressed. Most modern drives should have built in hardware compression as standard. Depending how much data you need to back up, DDS4 and 5 are also available (20/40gig and 36/72 gig respectively). Most manufacturers recommend that you run a head cleaning tape through the drive at least once a week if the drive is being used every night. As to which software is better, it's hard to say really. Backup Exec seems to be less prone to problems, but for complex networks Arcserve is more powerful and configurable. It also has much more detailed error logs which can be a godsend when troubleshooting problems. Both are fairly intuitive to use although, as you might expect, Arcserve is a bit more complicated to start with. As for prices, I suspect Arcserve costs quite a bit more than BE but I've no idea of prices I'm afraid. I've restored files using both BE and Arcserve, in both cases it was pretty stress free although I've never had to perform a full disaster recovery (yet). Just as a footnote, DDS drives are probably the most unreliable things we sell to our customers (no particular brand, just all of them!). Unfortunately though, I'm not aware of a viable alternative. Anyone else? Those are my experiences anyway, they're fairly limited but I hope they help a bit. Dan

My 2c. Visit www.ecrix.com and check out their VXA drives. I've been using one for the last year with no problems, very fast, 80/160gb, same price as dds3. I had to do 2 disaster recoveries during the past 2 yrs. I was using NT Backup for a single server. Have a scheduled server reboot every evening to ensure all sessions/files are closed. System restore worked fine. Before reverting to NT Backup I had paid a lot of money for ArcServe 2000.. while it was feature rich, in my case it was a disaster. Corrupted my data files costing me a fortune, and always required constant attention and updates. Support was poor. From my experience, I would not recommend it.

I also advise against ArcServe. Admittedly, I haven't used the latest versions, but the version we were using worked well, but only when they actually worked. ARCServe would have the bad habit of spontaneously rescheduling itself at random times. And the licensing inputs are atrocious. Veritas is a lot more intuitive in it's setup. They also have the open-file backup and full system restore options any major tape backup system uses. Actually, my preferance for backup medium is not tapes at all. Removable hard drives work a lot better. The space vs cost ratio is a heck of a lot better, it's a more reliable medium, and restore and cataloging is much, much faster. But for whatever reason, the major backup software sellers do not make backing up to removable drives very easy.

I would agree that removable hdd has advantages over tape. However, I would not entirely agree that they are more reliable. The hdd has moveable parts which leads me to think that it would be less relaible than tape. If the tape drive fails, the data is still on the tape.. If the hdd fails, the data is gone.