Greetings everyone,

I am currently in the process of evaluating solutions to the problem
of network-wide backups. My hope in posting this message is to gain
some insight as to why you chose ADSM over other products.

Before I proceed with some background information, I would like to
thank you for taking time to read this message and thank you in
advance for any help, advice, etc. that you may pass my way.

Our network environment here is configured as follows:
        -       A 16-MB/s Token-Ring backbone.
        -       An ES/9000 9221 model 200 host running MVS/XA.
                The host is connected to the backbone via a 3745 with
                a token-ring adapter.
                We have no plans to run TCP/IP on our MVS host.
                We will be converting to MVS/ESA by the first of summer.
        -       10 Novell 3.12 file servers on the token-ring.
        -       10 Sun Microsystems machines running a mixture of
                SunOS 4.1.3 and Solaris 2.3
                One of the Sun machines is a 630-MP, the others are a
                mixture of IPC, IPX, and SPARC 2.
        -       1 RS/6000 model 570 running AIX 3.2.5

From the above described configuration, I will need to backup
approximately 30-GB of data spanning all platforms.

Our ultimate goal is to somehow get the data to our host and off to
tape so our tape management system can handle retention, movement to
offsite storage, etc.

I have evaluated one solution to this problem which was a combination
of Netware for SAA, Stage3, and Legato's Networker. This
configuration allowed an LU6.2 (APPC) connection to our host and
supported all of the above mentioned platforms. The average throughput
to the host was 100 to 130-KB per second. I'm almost to the point of
tossing out this solution because of the lack of support from Legato.

The one good thing about the preceeding solution was that our host
supported it in our current configuration. I believe ADSM/MVS
requires ESA with DFSMS/MVS and the C/370 Library. Some of the other
host based solutions have similiar requirements.

I believe by the end of the year our host will be sufficiently
configured so as to support ADSM/MVS. However, we have an immediate
need to come up with at least an interim solution to our problem.

Any suggestions?

I had thought about running ADSM on one of the other platforms until
our host was prepared to run ADSM. I can't possibly run ADSM/6000
because of the critical nature of the application running on that
box. My next thought was ADSM/2. One concern I have about this is
migrating the backup data from ADSM/2 to ADSM/MVS. Can this be done?

If worse comes to worse, and I'm not able to get the data to the host
has anyone tried any other solutions such as Intel's StorageExpress
System?

Finally, I would GREATLY appreciate any information you may have that
led you to purchase your current solution to network-wide backups.

Again, thanks very much...

----------------------------------------------
Bud Porter, Sr. Systems Programmer
Bud Porter, Sr. Systems Programmer
City of Birmingham
Office of Data Processing
demb007 AT uabdpo.dpo.uab DOT edu