Good questions and I should have provided the info.  If I were to put
my official business signature on these emails, then you'd see my job
title and begin to understand why I don't know much.  That's the price
of being management...

When backing up MS-SQL and MS-Exchange, they use TDP.  When backing up
Windows and AIX servers, they use Backup/Archive Client.  So far, we
haven't had to deal with Solaris or Oracle but I fear those days may
soon end.  I do very much appreciate the excellent feedback that I have
received so far.  This seems to be a very active list.  That's code for
"a heck of a lot of emails going around", but that's a good thing.

Thanks again for all the help pointing me in the right direction.

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Sims [mailto:rbs AT bu DOT edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2006 10:05 AM
To: Wesley Smith
Subject: Re: How do you verify the Completion and Accuracy of Backups
and Restores?

Welcome aboard, Wesley -

I suggest that you re-post this question with full details on what you
are backing up (Unix, Windows, Solaris, Linux, file systems,  
Oracle, MSSQL, etc.), and how (Backup/Archive Client, TDP, other).   
Right now we have no idea, and can't advise without details.

    Richard Sims

On Nov 8, 2006, at 10:40 AM, Wesley Smith wrote:

>
> Hi All,
>
>       I've just joined this group and I am pleased to see a lot of
healthy 
> discussion going on.  The main reason I joined the group has to do 
> with trying to find some way to help out the people who are 
> responsible for dealing with Tivoli Storage Manager at a neighboring 
> agency.  I represent a State agency in Louisiana.  We do a lot of 
> large
> applications for Statewide users as well as departmental support.   
> We do
> not have to deal with the H/W  and OS issues.  That's someone else's 
> job.  That also means that they are responsible for the backup and 
> recovery procedures for our application servers.  That's where Tivoli 
> and you guys come in.
>
>       My problem is that they (that sister agency) do not seem to have
a 
> reliable way of verifying that all backups have been properly 
> completed.  They don't even seem to have a way to know that all files 
> (that need to be backed up) are being backed up.  I've seen the 
> reports that get generated during the backup process and I am 
> definitely unimpressed.  Backups start and backups complete.  There 
> doesn't seem to be anything that says how many rows are copied or how 
> large the files are or anything else that could be used for verifying 
> the accuracy of the backups.  They tell my folks that we should trust 
> Tivoli is doing the job correctly.  Trust is the problem....
>
>       We have needed to have restores done on just a few databases in
the 
> past and the restores were not complete and up to date.  In each case 
> we were able to rebuild the data using logs maintained within the 
> applications but that should not have been necessary.  Each recovery 
> was done at a point after a backup and before additional processing 
> had been done within the apps so they should have been complete.  In 
> each case, the folks who run Tivoli for us were able to track down and

> show that problems had occurred during the processing of the backups.

> They did this through circumstantial evidence and in each case once 
> again said that they have no way of verifying that the backups are 
> actually good.
> I hear a lot about the difficulty of trying to write a program to 
> process the Tivoli log files.
>
>       I think I'm at wit's end with these folks and the product.  I
know 
> that the people are competent and I suspect that the product (like 
> other things available from IBM) really is weak on the reporting and 
> verification issue.  I'm hoping that someone out there in the Big Wide

> World has already solved this problem with an in-house or third-party 
> solution.  Sorry for being so long winded.  Any ideas...?
>
> Wesley Smith