Wanda,

        I agree, but backing up everything just because it is there is a
very
expensive issue.

        In most companies, IT in one form or another is 'charged back' to a
client department, but to keep down spending on IT, the decision is made,
either by IT or the client department management, to not backup
"everything".

        TSM is the only backup solution I have run across that does not
re-backup
things that have not changed, and this is why I support it in deference to
other
backup solutions whenever possible.

        As I have told clients I consult for, and both management and
internal
clients I have worked for, is "we can back up everything, you just have to
pay
for it".  And when the price tag comes out, they don't like the answer.

        The compromise is not normally between IT and the end clients, it is

between the client and the budget.  IT just gets stuck in the middle.

Other options are:
                1. Use a central terminal server and thin client desktops
that do not
have or need disks on the desktop. (Sun has/had a Cashing file system that
worked great, Wise sells Winterm terminals that use a central terminal
server,
there is also the Linux Terminal Server Project to do this with open source
software.  It is possible, it works, but lots of folks don't like it for
their
own reasons)

                2. I have had some clients where their answer to backups is
to not backup. They put everything on RAID5 systems or mirrors, automate the
checking on
these systems and don't worry about it.  (I do not condone this behavior, I
have
just observed it.)

                3. Use an operating system that keeps data backed up.  I
only know of one, and it is not considered an option by most companies.
Check out AT&T/Lucent/Bell Labs OS called Plan9
(http://cm.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/).  It has an interesting method where
when you change a file, it is effectively backed up.  And to retrieve it,
just do a change directory to last Tuesday at 3PM if you want to.  ...
Interesting in concept, but probably not practical for most of our
institutions.  BTW, they migrated, like HSM, off to optical media.  I guess
we could emulate this if we had a big HSM system that was used instead of
large disk farms.  But Plan9 was DESIGNED with backup as part of its
architecture from what I can tell.  It was not retrofitted like every other
OS I have seen (including NT, IBM's VM, *NIX(in all its flavors), MVS, MVT,
IBM's mainframe DOS, CRONOS, and others).


A Backup Story:

Once upon a time I worked for a large oil company supporting their
exploration
department as a unix desktop admin.  We purchased some 9G disk drives (huge
in their day) for a few high dollar exploration geophysicists.  We also
installed an tape drive on each of these peoples desktop, with instructions
on how to use it, and who to call if there was a problem, or if they needed
tapes, or handholding, etc.

The drives were pretty reliable.  But we still suggested users put a tape in
at the end of the day and we (as the admins) would provide a script to run
on
their Sun workstations to tar their files off to tape.

As is normal, users ignore their admins (as we ignore our doctors advice
about
eating and drinking sensibly) and a disk died.  We replaced the disk, then
asked
the user for their backup tapes, as we were glad to restore the data for the
user.
The most recent backup was 6 months old.  This $100K/year user almost got
fired
over this, as it contained ALL his previous 6 months of effort.

We did get back about 60% of his data, with a $20K recovery fee from a data
recovery
company.

WHY this story?  He saved the company millions of dollars in data.  Because
it scared
the rest of our user community into asking 'how do I back up my data?' or
'do you
have a tape I could use to backup my data?' etc.  It was just an expensive
way to
get there.

We did do central backups of all computer room based data, databases, etc.
But not
the desktops.  Why? There was no maintenance window we could have agreement
on to
backup the desktops, and if we did, there was insufficient bandwidth to
centrally
back them up.

Another story of it could be done, but we were told it was not worth the $$$
money.

... Time to go change a tape ... Jack