Folks,
Dunno if it's top secret, or what, but this week I innocently (hah!)
asked Legato about transferring my BudTool license to a new NetApp
that may be coming in soon.  Their website says host transfers are
free, so what the heck?
Anyway, instead of getting an answer, I got directed to my local
Legato salesperson, who informed me that they've finally come to
their senses and are offering a one-for-one exchange to replace
our BudTool products with equivalent NetWorker products, at no
cost other than putting it all back on tech-support contract.
I checked, and it's not 1-April-2001.  Maybe by the Mayan calendar?
By my investigation so far, NetWorker-6.1 claims it will do everything
our BudTool-4.6.1 does, with the exception of:
(1) NDMP backup to non-NetApp tape drive.  An extra-cost SnapImage
    option turns your Networker tape host into an NDMP tape server
    to provide this functionality.  OK, so it's not quite 1-for-1.
(2) Cloning NDMP tapes.  They say that'll be along soon (I forgot
    to ask if I could do that with SnapImage).  But one can do a
    second backup to offsite media to partially work around this
    limitation.
I'm still not wild about Networker, but "Free is a very good price."
Well, not counting the initial $30k investment in BudTool, anyway.
So, has anyone else heard about this?  I could find no mention
of it (nor any previous transition programs) on their website.
Regards,
-- 
Marion Hakanson <hakanson(a)cse.ogi.edu>
CSE Computing Facilities