Actually there are some 2-drive tiny LTO and AIT libraries that are very affordable; that's the best alternative.
If you can't do that, consider backing up over the WAN. Whether it's practical depends on the type & size of the remote clients, but if they aren't huge, it's possible. The initial backup will take a long time (so what, do it on the weekend). But If you use client compression AND enable subfile backup, the daily backups may be very manageable. That will give your remote sites the ability to do ad hoc restores, usually, with no problem. And your site becomes their "vault", so disaster recovery is taken care of. That leaves the big problem to be LARGE restores - e.g., suppose a hard disk dies on the remote client and requires 30GB to be restored. If you are lucky enough to have a fairly homogenous client population, for this case you could consider keeping a spare server at your main site; rebuild it locally and then fed-ex it out to the remote site instead of taking days to restore with limited bandwidth. If they need rebuilds faster than that - they gotta get budgets for local tape! -----Original Message----- From: Douglas Currell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 10:54 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: TSM Downward Scaleability The organization that I work for deploys TSM quite sucessfully at its large main sites that serve some +4000 nodes. It is very apparent that TSM scales upwardly very well but I believe that scaling down is something else. MY question is this:How can similar services be delivered to sites where there are less than ten nodes, limited bandwidth, no system administrators and, most importantly, tiny budgets. The organization can comfortably absorb the price of software and TSM licensing for these sites but there';s no budget to equip each site with a dual tape drive library. What are the alternatives? An autoloader, for example.?? ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca