Well, we're looking at going lights out for 6-8 hours a night (within
a year, trying to cut staffing pretty hard) and we've just bought some
Memorex 5450E's (would have liked IBM 3490E's but hey, it's lowest bid
around here) so the odds are real high it'll be a Memorex robotic unit
attached to our VM system and that'll handle VM and our current ADSM
client load.  The question is probably obvious now, since we also
have a VMS cluster and don't want to invest in another robotic unit
for the VMS cluster.  Also of concern is that our Ultrix machine is being
replaced by an OSF/1 machine (as in we're waiting for delivery) soon.

So, while management would like a single backup solution for all our
stuff, I'm a little short on solutions.  OSF/1 and VMS are easy on
a non-VM platform but those options have no VM support and the current
VM solution doesn't work for the others.  I would of course, prefer to
make the VM system invaluable rather than have it the odd man out.
Whoever gets the robotic unit wins the backup wars :).  So is there
any talk, hints, plans, to have a VMS client?  I just sorta assume
that OSF/1 will be added as a client, I've already seen a couple of
requests for it here on the list.

I know I can NFS mount the OSF/1 system to a unix host and back it up
but, since it will have 2500-3000 users on it, I'd really like them to
be able to do their own restores.  I know that Memorex sells sometype
of backup network software as well, so that's another possible solution
for me as well but their brochures haven't arrived yet and I'm not wild
about supporting 3 different backup products, VMBackup/E, ADSM and
whatever Memorex sells but I'll do it if that's the only way to get
the robotic unit.

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Keith A. Crabb                    Keith AT uh DOT edu
Keith A. Crabb                    Keith AT uh DOT edu
University of Houston             keith at uhupvm1
Operating System Specialist       1-713-743-1530