Fazil Saiyed said:

>I completely agree with Preston, 

Me too! ;)

>but i am curious to find out if any other 
>comparable backup software offer this benefits of AFTD now, 
>how does networker compare to say commvault, netbackup and TSM's 
>AFTD features

In no particular order:

TSM is very good at moving data from one device to another in a very
automated fashion.  This comes from the fact that they've been doing
disk staging a lot longer than the rest of us.  They also can move data
equally well from disk to tape or tape to tape.  They do have the dual
copy feature, but only on the initial backup.  You cannot create two
simultaneous copies from one original.  You can only create two copies
when making a backup.

NBU I'd say is second best in this category.  NBU has a similar feature
to NetWorker's disk staging (e.g. without advanced configuration,
backups can be destaged off of disk to tape) with their Disk Storage
Units, but they can destage more than one backup at a time.  If you need
more control than this, or want to use a VTL to stage, you can use their
Vault product, which automates copying backups from disk to tape, tape
to tape, whatever.  It allows for a LOT of control over what gets copied
(by policy, schedule, level, retention, etc), and where.

I'm less familiar with CommVault, as it's just now starting to creep
into the enterprise space where I spend most of my time, but it's
features seem most similar to NBU in this area.

>how about dual copy, that feature if once 
>available could solve cloning issues ? 

IMHO, this feature (available in TSM, CommVault, & NBU) doesn't help
this issue.  You don't want to send one copy to disk and one to tape.
(Your tape slows down the disk.)  This feature is best if you want to
make two copies to the same type of device.  For example, if you've
already staged to disk, but you want to make two copies on tape at the
same time.  (As I said, TSM can't do that.)





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