[Seattle Paul]

Hi,

We have two different Windows servers with 3 different tape drives and all have had similar failures during the backups. The only common denominator has been the backup software (whose name I do not recall). IBM (who has supplied all the hardware) suggested using a different backup application that is supported by IBM.

IBM's suggestion was to make our choice of one of the following.

Veritas NetBackup 4.5
Veritas Backup Exec. NT 8.6
BrightStor ARCserve Backup v9 (formerly ArServe 2000)

Do any of you have some experience with these particular programs? If so,
what do you recommend.

Our System Administrator has just bailed, so ease of use is an issue.

Thanks,

Paul
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[Bob Cerelli]

Paul,

I've used all three and just tended to prefer the Veritas software.

However, since a lot of customers were also experiencing a high level of tape drive failures (one company had three fail within a year), I've been using alternatives like backing up to removable IDE or USB drives.

You typically don't need any software at all, it is much faster and more reliable than tape and much easier to recover from (which is the whole point it backing up in the first place).

 

[jhb04]

DO NOT USE BRIGHTSTOR ARCSERVE!! If there is another option, I'd go for that as opposed to the Arcserve, to be blunt - it's crap.