On Fri, 24 Jan 2003, Perry Brown wrote:

[snip]
> > 1. With over 200 clients, updating them from one release to the next
> > requires
> >    going to each client (via login of some kind) and doing an interactive
> >    pkgadd.  I'm told that NBU allows client updates to be "pushed out."
> > This would save a lot of time, and be version reliable.
>
> True to some degree, my company disabled rsh everywhere so we can't take

ssh is a drop-in replacement for rsh and either comes with or is available
(for free) for any reasonbly current (ie: less than 10 years old) UNIX out
there.  I don't have rsh open on any machine I run, but ssh is on all of
them.  NBU will use ssh for pushing out clients.  If you're not familiar
with ssh I *strongly* suggest you check it out asap.

> advantage of this so if you are not running rsh you may end up with the same
> issues. I am looking to using a package deployment to the UNIX systems.
> Windows hosts can be upgraded via an install from one host (during the
> install it asks if you want to install to the local host or remote hosts) I
> have not used the option much so can speak about it.

It works reasonably well, but still only does one client at a time.  If
you want to do several simultaneously you'll need some sort of Windows
package distribution tool.

[snip]
> We are running NDMP on a few Netapp devices and have not had major issues.
> We are doing volume backups and qtree backups. So I'd be curious what the
> issues are. Granted when doing vaults you can't use the same drives
> connected to the Netapp devices but other then needing to over buy on
> drives.....Is the NDMP issues when you are dealing with a large # of NDMP
> clients?

The main complaint about NBU and NDMP was the lack of DAR (Direct Access
Restore) which finally came out in maint pack 3 a week or so ago.
Without DAR a NDMP restore has to go through every tape in a backup set
until it reaches the individual file(s) you want to restore.  If your
backups fit on one or two tapes this isn't such a big deal, but when you
start having to use more than that for a single backup a restore can take
many hours.  DAR allows you to skip over the earlier tapes and just uses
the one containing the file(s) in question.

I haven't had a chance to try NDMP DAR with MP3 so if anyone out there has
I'm very interested to see if Veritas got it right.

As far as using gnutar for restores, it's not quite as uncommon as you
might think.  Not everyone backs up their catalog the way they should, and
not everyone can find the CD media right after a disaster.  No, that's
right, but it's reality for more people than you think.

> >Comments, Suggestion, Jokes ??  :-)
>
> A string walks into a bar.....

Don't forget to tip your waiters!! ;-)

-Jason

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