James,

 

The whole concept of NetBackup ensures multiplatform operations, which
is one of the main reasons why I suggest it to my major customers. In
general my advise is to have the master server on a Windows system, as
the GUI is much easier to use (and often faster). For the rest there is
not much difference. If your primary knowledge is on UNIX, you are
probably best advised to do the master on a UNIX machine.

 

The majority of problems I encounter with multi-OS systems is the
slightly different way UNIX and Windows work with name resolution when
multiple LAN segments are involved. Make sure your Windows system only
has one network name, don't try to bind a different name to each NIC, as
you can easily do on UNIX systems. Plan your LAN segments carefully,
make sure your binding order is correct. Preferably you should only use
DNS for name resolution, but don't be scared to use hosts files in a
multi-NIC server, or even routing statements.

 

If your name resolution is consistent and your servers are on
approximately the same patch level, multi-OS environments work fine. It
is also no problem to make a backup of a Windows server using a UNIX
media server or vice-versa. Once the data is gathered by the client
software it's the same format. Naturally, when using advanced techniques
as BCVs or SnapView problems could arise, but most of these are
self-explanatory.

 

There are rumors about UNIX media servers being faster, or vice-versa,
but that depends on the peculiarities of the individual systems. In
general the performance doesn't differ a lot between various media
servers, and most of the time the bottleneck is at the client rather
than the media server anyway.

 

Kind regards,

 

Marcel van Drunen

UNISYS The Netherlands

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