Autochanger/Backups on Unix

[Adrian Hall]

>  a> Arcada Backup Exec	Doesnt do incrementals
> 
> Are you sure about this?  I've found them to have an excellent product.
> 

Confirmation from Arcada Technical Support.  Quote: "The Unix Operating
System does not have an Archive Bit, so you cannot clear the Archive bit,
and hence, the Unix Agent does not handle Incremental or Differential
backups."

Update:

>  a> EST's BRU		May or may not handle the autochanger properly
>  a> ctar		May or may not handle the autochanger properly

	These work by considering the entire changer a single volume,
	by using the changers sequential mode for backups and restores.
	Of course, EST has a version of BRU for Linux (which costs a
	mere $199 + S/H for the network version), so it is probably worth 
	a look.  I do not like EST's pricing strategy though.
	
>  a> Alexdandria		Never heard of anyone using this

	I heard that Spectralogic came out with a new product, so
	maybe I will go look at that.

>  a> PDC Budtool		Possibility

	I looked at this product recently, and it uses dump to do its
	backups.  To me, it looks like a bunch of tk-perl scripts, so
	in theory, it should be easy to get a Linux version going.

>  a> Legato			Expensive!
>  a> SM-Back			Expensive!

	I got a quote from Software Moguls yesterday priced at $20K

> GNU tar has the ability to run a script when changing the volume of a
> multi-volume backup.  The syntax is "... -M -F <scriptfilename>".  If you 
> can make a script that changes the tape, which ought to be fairly easy, 
> this is all you really need.

	This is a possibility, but I would have to write the Exabyte 210
	tape changer utility (which I may end up doing).

	The final option is writing my own backup server, which again, I
	may end up doing.

Adrian
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrian Hall					adrian at hall.pn.com
Systems & Networking Engineer			ahall at xionics.com
(at home)