Even if I am not able to contribute something new to the topic, I would like to
endorse Bob's statements. Our situation is quite the same. So far we are not 
using
NAS appliance. But planning our next mail server generation and considering the
amount of accounts (40,000) we have now a closer look at it. No vendor we have
talked with could offer us a solution which can use our TSM environment for 
backup
and that's a great pity.

Werner

Bob Booth - CCSO wrote:

> Hi all!
>
> I need some help!
>
> We are presently looking for a 'NAS' type solution for email delivery.  At
> this time, we use a large number of UNIX boxen to relay, route, deliver, and
> store *vast* amounts of email for 48,000 students/staff on our campus.  We 
> have
> been approached by several different companies that provide 'dedicated
> appliances', that do everything from scoop to nuts when it comes to email.
>
> When I sit in the meetings with these folks, I ask the hard question... How
> do we do backups?  There answer is 'duh.. don't you use Legato or Veritas?  We
> support those natively'  'Grrr', I say.  'No, we use TSM.' 'oh', they say.
>
> Then, we start getting technical, and they tell me that they do 'expose NDMP'
> and TSM can do that.  Well, not exactly true.  Tivoli has not GA'd an NDMP
> client yet, and NDMP is not exactly a pretty protocol for backup/restore.
>
> What I am looking for are others, especially Universities, that are using
> ADSM/TSM to back up email, that may be interested in looking into integrated
> email solutions.  If I can actually tell these vendors that TSM is widely used
> by universities (and of course, others) for this type of application, they
> might actually think about supporting it.  I am sorry, but Veritas is *not*
> the only enterprise backup software solution.  NAS vendors should start
> looking for better ways to do backup/restore in large environments.
>
> I would also be interested in hearing what others are doing in large capacity
> email shops.  Are people using appliances?  Do they support TSM?  Anyone doing
> NDMP?
>
> Feel free to reply to me directly. I will not give out names or email
> addresses to sales people either!
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> Bob Booth
> University of Illinois - Urbana

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