JoyceW wrote, in part..
> We were thinking about changing our backups to collocate, but are not sure if
> this is a wise choice.  We are currently backing up 30 servers.  A couple of
> them are 100 gig plus.  We were hoping to speed up restore times.....but I 
> feel
> there will be consequences if we do this.  Any thoughts????

Without knowing particulars, I'd guess that the consequences for you
would be very positive.  The size of the servers doesn't matter.  How
much changes each day and what changes *does* matter.

Enabling collocation means that, given enough tapes, each of your 30
servers will in essence have its own sub-pool of tapes.  Thus, when
restoring, (for data written in collocation mode), you'll never be
skipping over another servers data.  This usually translates into fewer
tape mounts and faster restore.

Collocation probably means more backup tape mounts, but to know if
this was significant, we'd need to know a lot more (about the amount
of data backed up each night from each server, the capacity of your
tapes, and the size(s) of your disk pools).

Hope this helps,

Wayne T. Smith                          ADSM AT Maine DOT edu
ADSM Technical Coordinator - UNET       University of Maine System