Steve & Others,

There are a few questions to be answered from the previous information. What is the OS being run on the F630? Is the Q2/15 an Autoloader of Robot version.

Based upon a few assumptions there are three options.

1. If cost is the major consideration for using the Dump command as opposed to Backup Software there are a couple of options. First, you can use the control panel on a 9730 to mount drives to certain drives ( I am not sure if this is available in the Q2/15). This is not very automated since an individual will have to be present to use the control panel for mounts and unmounts. Secondly, you could write a script to do this, however this will be time consuming and it is reinventing the wheel (ie backup software is already written and tested)

2. To be able to perform simultaneous backup of 2 or more servers a backup software can be used along with STK ACSLS software (This software simply controls the robot and shares it between multiple servers or multiple backup packages). ACSLS needs a stand alone SUN or IBM box to run on (Sparc 10 or Small AIX server) for UNIX and needs Libattach software from STK if NT is involved.

3. Backup software can be installed on one of the server and the additional servers can be backed up over the network simultaneously using multiplexing capabilities common in most backup software.

Based upon the current information these are the possible solutions.

Jim Genrich MPSE Storage Technology, Inc.

---------- From: grdodson@lexmark.com [SMTP:grdodson@lexmark.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 1999 8:29 PM To: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Tape Robots and "autoloading".

We are purchasing a F760 and are faced with the usual backup dilemma. To backup our F630 we have a single drive DLT robot (Breece Hill Q2.15) and use local dumps. This takes 15+ hours a day (3 tapes) and obviously doesn't scale well. So we are investigating larger robots with multiple tape drives. Currently the StorageTek 9730 is looking interesting.

The problem we have is by using local dumps we need the tape robot to autoload the drives. Moreover with a multi drive robot the autoload

function needs to be able to control which slots are loaded into which drives. Anyone know of the StorageTek supports this? Any other recommendations multi drive 28+ slot tape robots are also welcome.

FYI. The reason we aren't just stacking two Breece Hill Q2.15's is that we have been underwhelmed with the usability and quality of these boxes. We find the documentation and user interface to be quite poor. (And they never delivered the S/W upgrade they promised)

The reason we aren't using an NDMP backup S/W package is that the nature of the data on this box requires a "level 0" backup every night. Most of the features of the NDMP S/W would never be needed (indexing, etc.) and therefore be an unnecessary expense.

Graydon Dodson (606) 232-6483 grdodson@lexmark.com Lexmark International Inc.