I can't speak for Veritas/Legato/ArcServ but Backup Exec used to be Veritas and I think is back to Seagate, I can answer for. The con's would be bad tape usuage, but that can be a pro when you send it off site for DR. The pro would be total restore without the hastle of versioning off anything. We did fulls every weekend (except Month end which was a full for the monthend instead of weekend). Then Monday night to Thursday night we did differentials (better use of tape, but more redundant (which also gave more backups/versions)), Thursday nights was the master differential. Come restore time all you needed was Weekend full and 1 day tape (2 tapes) which gave us quick restores (name of the game). Con would be all tapes were offsite, therefore all restores were 24 hour turnaround unless Big Boss needed then I drove to Vault and restored within 1 hour. We knew that each client/server would take 25 tapes per year (8 dailies (Monday - Thursday) , 5 weekends, 11 monthends, and 1 yearend) and add 1 tape per year (off site permantly) but these tapes were reused continuously (remaining 24). So if a client/server took more than 1 tape on differential, then multiply times 25. I enjoyed the easability to restore but the headaches of admin seemed worth the TSM conversion. We have had TSM for nearly 2 years now and we are gradually (slower than I like) becoming more tape efficient 385 private and 339 scratch vs the 2500 tapes. But I am learning that tapes are not the only issue, during restore if 1 tape per server will make 6x faster then the TSM nocollocate, more tapes can be better. The main thing is the main thing RESTORE.
Gerald Wichmann To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <gwichman@ATTB cc: I.COM> Subject: Veritas/Legato/ArcServ Sent by: "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] IST.EDU> 04/17/02 01:19 PM Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" Not specifically TSM question but more of a question to better understand how to discuss pro's/cons to other competing products. Since my background is all TSM, I'm curious on how the other competitors handle media. Is my assumption correct that they waste a lot of tape space? As far as I understand it, all these products do traditional full/incremental type backups where each full and incremental "uses a tape". Thus Server 1 would suck up 7 tapes in a week (1 full, 6 incrementals). Is this true? Or can these products actually put 2 full's on a single tape? Or multiple incrementals on a single tape?