Len Boyle <Len.Boyle AT sas DOT com> had this to say,

> Hello Deb
> You have fired up this group a little bit. 

:-)  'twas not my intent, but I'm pleased with the response.  I've learned
quite a bit from you guys.
  
>  
> NBU has a wide range of clients. But they only support one release level down.

Ahh, now this is very good to know.  That is one thing about Legato that has
made it easier to administer - clients don't need to be up-rev, and when I
made a quick survey of my clients (after reading your comments) I find that
many of them, unix and windoze, are very down-rev.  

But, this is likely due to a function of not being able to "push" out updates
to them - they get forgotten, and since Legato supports this kind of backward
compatibility, upgrading is low priority.  At least until they start
exhibiting some sort of problem.

> This makes it fun when one has clients o/s levels that have to remain at
> older levels due to application or hardware issues. An example of a problem
> child for us will be hp/ux which has no client support in nbu 4.5 so it will
> be unsupported with netbackup version 5.

This example is a good illustration - and a troubling one.  This kind of
rev-tie-to-OS has been one bugaboo of system administration - IMHO, backup
software shouldn't interfere with Application and OS levels.  I would consider
this issue to be a negative.

> The Tech support on the whole seems quite good. But not if the problem
> requires someone who can read and or write source code. They seem to have a
> rule that they folks that you can talk to can not talk to a developer. Unless
> you pay big bucks for extra support. Of course that might just be for me.

Reports regarding TechSupport on this list (and off) seem to indicate that it
is as inconsistant as Legato.  Until recently I had few complaints with Legato
tech support - usually got someone who was knowledgable, usually received
call-back and good help in a timely fashion.  Then I got someone who
consistantly gave me incorrect information (and I knew it, but couldn't
convince her otherwise - attitude, I guess).  I pity the newly indoctrinated
SA who has to deal with her again.

My point is that techsupport is only as good as the person you're able to hook
up with, and the commitment they (the tech support depart) have to resolving
your issues.  I am not afraid to escalate an issue if the person is fumbling
about and getting off-track.  Support costs to much to allow a neophyte to
jerk you around.

> The company does seem to be open to changing the product, and they do take
> suggestions. They said that the readme for a feature pack coming out next
> month is 900 pages long. This sounds like a new release. Many new features.

Geeze, 900 pages?  ouch.

> From a Unix master you can not install/upgrade the windows client. Our pc
> folks created an install package from the cdrom image and four patch sets.

This is another "downside" as we have not (initially) considered a windoze
master - but I suppose the archetecture could change - I wouldn't mind
offloading responsibility for PC clients to our PC guy.  heh-heh.

>  
> So it is not too hard to push out unix and windows patches. But the patches 
> do not seemed to have any easy  way to record that they have a problem when 
> batched. 

One usually has to really know how to program for trapping problems, that's
true.

> Version logging is almost non-existant. You have to go look in the patch 
> history file on each machine and see which patches have been installed. Also 
> the place to look for install issues. 

The patchlog would be more than Legato has...
  
Thank you for your comments.  Most illuminating...
:-)


deb