On Mon 14 Feb, 2000, Lisa Paton lcp@head-cfa.harvard.edu wrote:
Thanks for the review Lisa, word from teh front-line is far more valuable than marketing bumf.
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supported. I liked the fact that both QR and Veritas used an ISO standard tar format for the backup. This ruled Legato out early, since they use
Hmmm, I suspect from what I've learned from Veritas and others, that you don't see tar format on the tapes used for the basic backups. The reasoning being that the backup software usually interleaves several streams of data from clients to ensure streaming onto tapes (to extend tape lifetimes as well as reduce the overall backup window). Cloning the tapes in some manner allows the backup software to reduce the chance of data loss AND also to rationalise the interleaving so you do get tape files with coherent tar format inside.. but some folks don't clone tapes, so they may well never get tar-readable tapes.
I'd be happy to hear otherwise, but I wouldn't place too much value in that ISO standard tar formatting. I have to say that when I first heard, from Veritas Reps trying to sell their product to me, that the guys at CDC had nobbled gnu tar into an enterprise-class backup product (GPL notwithstanding) I just chuckled. Valid approach, but when you're backing up 100's of GB's or more, and spending through the nose for an enterprise-class backup product that manages every detail for you, the value of personally being able to grub through a tape using tar begins to pale a bit.
a proprietary format. I was impressed that Jim Ward (President of Workstation Solutions) came out to meet with me personally, AND could answer technical questions that the Veritas SE couldn't answer. WS impressed me as a small, technically savvy company that was very responsive to me during the evaluation period. I had a couple small glitches that were
Now that sounds like NetApp - who still send out plenipotentiaries to find out what their customers are really doing, and really need.
Lisa Paton -- End of excerpt from Lisa Paton