A long while back, I had 36 boxes of the following config: Pentium 100's,
128MB RAM, 16Mbit Token Ring, running OS/2 2.11 with Lan Server 4, Notes
4.1, backing up mail files as flat files.  Turned client side compression
on, backup window went from 4 hours to 1.25 hours.  I cut the data sent
over the wire down by 66%, and got a corresponding reduction in the backup
time.  My machines were effectively offline for the backup window, due to
the network being saturated, so the fact they were also CPU bound really
didn't matter.

It all depends on the config.  The worst you could do is to test a little,
see what happens.

Oh, my library was a 3494 with 2xB11 drives in it.  I kept utilizing the
same number of tapes, but the capacity at full went from around 28GB to
11GB, as would be expected.

Nick Cassimatis
Technical Team Lead
e-Business Backup/Recovery Services
919-363-8894   T/L 223-8965
nickpc AT us.ibm DOT com

Today is the tomorrow of yesterday.