we were trying 6.01 patch 001 - the current one.

Mike Sphar wrote:

For what it's worth, we had pretty much the same experiences with Legato. Terrible support, buggy software, etc.

However, I'm informed by our backups administrator that recently, Legato has changed their tune quite a bit. Their customer support has been much more responsive and helpful, and the latest releases (v6?) is their most stable and reliable release in years.

I'm still regarding them with a bit of suspicion due to how often we were burned in the past, but they do appear to be making a strong effort to better themselves after their recent financial upheavals.

-- Mike Sphar - Sr Systems Administrator - Engineering Support Services - Remedy Corporation BOFH, GWP, MCP, MCP+I, MCSE, BFD

-----Original Message----- From: neil lehrer [mailto:nlehrer@ibb.gov] Sent: Monday, April 09, 2001 10:40 AM To: Marion Hakanson Cc: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: BudTool transition news

fyi. we weren't budtool users, but were legato and wanted to use networker with our new filers. never got anywhere. tech support was apathetic, no followup, they closed cases that were not done. we think they lost the ndmp recipe. we gave up.

Marion Hakanson wrote:

...

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@cse.ogi.edu CSE Computing Facilities