"Networker AT cresend DOT com" said:

>The implementations I've done, cloning outside the VTL was the right
way to
>do it.

And most of the ones I've done have been that way as well.

>Cloning in NW is not that hard

IF you can use autocloning or you're a GOOD shell scripter.  There's a
whole world out that neither apply to.  Autocloning doesn't work for a
significant percentage of the NW customer base.  As to scripting,
there's a whole group of people that can't do that either.

>when you're cloning from VTL to physical tape autoclone works 
>pretty good and is very easy to configure. 

It totally works for smaller environments.  But when you get into larger
environments, it's way too single-threaded to get the job done.  That's
why larger environments script it.

>I haven't seen any performance hit from doing that.

I think that's true for most people.   Like I said, though, there are
some data sets that when cloned using the normal way take significantly
longer than when bulk-copied the way they are copied when a VTL copies
it.

>Volume sizes are purposely kept smaller or not filled up in the VTL as
a
>best practice. 

Yup.  All on board on this one.

>Plus I like having a volume reference for each copy of my data.

You have a volume reference for each copy of your data in the other
model, too.  It's just that, without also cloning from VT to VT, you
only have ONE copy of each backup.  I don't like that and I'm guessing
you don't like that.  BUT, for the 40-50% of people that are OK with
that, they can have virtual tapes and physical tapes and never have to
figure out how to clone them.

I'm talking about people that do things like have send their original,
uncloned tape offsite after one week.  If that's what they're doing,
they could do that in an integrated VTL and not have to learn how to
clone.  Yes, they will have to match barcodes and have virtual tapes
that match the size of physical tapes, but they could do it, even in a
large environment -- without having to script.

I'm not saying I like it or support it, or that it has more advantages
than the other way.  I'm just saying that it doesn't have the bar code
mistmatching problem that was referred to, and there are environments
where it would work better than the regular cloning method.






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