Networker

Re: [Networker] incompatibilities between different Networker ver sions

2003-01-07 21:05:27
Subject: Re: [Networker] incompatibilities between different Networker ver sions
From: Andrew McGeorge <Andrew.McGeorge AT ASBBANK.CO DOT NZ>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTMAIL.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2003 15:02:41 +1300
This is a little like arguing over which East European car is the best.
They're all crappy.

I'd like to point out a few of the more glaring flaws with our chosen
vehicle though.

Reporting is difficult. In one report the various fields might be separated
by spaces, tabs, colons, semicolons, and commas. Getting that data into a
spreadsheet, or processing it in any other way is painful to say the least.
I've also discovered that two fields with the same name in different reports
have different values and I can find no explanation for the discrepancies.
This leads me to wonder what else is reported inaccurately.
Reporting is such a basic function for an enterprise backup system that I
can see no excuse for it's poor support under NetWorker.

The manuals are badly organised and deficient.
e.g. The error message manual seems only have about half of the messages
listed.
Also, a lot of very important installation and configuration information is
in the command ref, rather than the install guide or admin guide.

The architecture of the product means that the more clients you have the
more difficult it becomes to schedule backups.
Scheduling is done with the savegroups, but you are limited in the number of
savegroups that you can run concurrently (read the command ref on the
savegrp command). It is also recommended that you run the large clients
first and the small clients second, but inside the save group, the units are
savesets, and because of the design of NetWorker, the small savesets always
run first, and setting priorities is pointless.

The way that failures are handled is also quite poor.
When a savegroup is started the first thing it does is compile a worklist
(essentially a list of all savesets to be backed up). If a saveset fails it
is marked for retry (if you specify retries). However it is not retried
until all the other savesets on the worklist have completed.

Let's take an example.

One savegroup with 10 clients, and a 12 hour backup window. Each client has
one saveset that will take between 9 and 10 hours to back up. Parallelism,
target sessions, and the number of drives available means that all 10 save
sets are backed up concurrently. Because of a temporary network glitch, one
of the savesets fails after about 10 minutes. It will not be retried until
all of the other savesets completes. It will therefore not complete within
the backup window.
It should, under the above circumstances, wait some predetermined time, and
then retry.

There is more but I think I made my point. We shouldn't settle for this just
because all the other products are poor. We're at version 6 and Legato
NetWorker seems nothing like a mature enterprise ready product to me.



-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Mooney [mailto:mooney AT DOGBERT.CC.NDSU.NODAK DOT EDU]
Sent: 8 January 2003 12:59:PM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTMAIL.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] incompatibilities between different Networker
versions


In regard to: Re: [Networker] incompatibilities between different
Networker...:

>> in the meanwhile the workaround is to stop using DNS
>>and put static hosts files on all 140+ clients! I'm not sure whether
>>to laugh or cry.
>Well I don't know your issue here, but I have never seen a case where hosts
>files were the only solution.

I think that if you restrict your comments to the UNIX environment,
everything you've said is true Davina.  I like NetWorker a lot, I think
that for UNIX platforms it's a good product, and I think that it's better
than the other enterprise backup packages I've seen.

I, however, *have* seen a situation involving a dual-homed UNIX networker
server and multiple dual-homed NetWare boxes where the only solution to
a problem we're facing is "spoofing" hostname resolution by adding entries
to the /etc/hosts on the server and the equivalent on the NetWare clients.
This is not a DNS problem -- the DNS for our server farm is well
maintained and has been for years.

> I wish I was lucky enough to be able to say that this is
>>my last year using Networker, but that would involve somebody
>>admitting they'd made a mistake. sigh.
>That's if they have made a mistake. Sure there are competing products (not
>many in this class though) but each of them comes with its own selection of
>bugs and issues, perhaps different to the ones in NetWorker, but equally
>troublesome and annoying. NetWorker IS a mature product these days,

I agree with this, for all platforms that Legato says NetWorker supports,
except NetWare.  While NetWorker for NetWare has certainly improved since
the 4.15 client, it's still not very robust on NetWare.

> and the
>problems with current versions are minor compared to some that have gone in
>the past. However, fixing bugs is an iterative process and you cannot see
>the benefit unless you install the versions containing the fixes. All
>software products are like this.

I'm on your side on this issue and do think NetWorker is a good product
and has gotten noticeably better in just the last three UNIX
point-releases.  As the primary "backup" administrator, I wouldn't even
consider changing to something else for our UNIX and Windows clients.
I only wish the NetWare client would improve to the point where it's
as reliable as the UNIX and windows clients are.

Tim
--
Tim Mooney                              mooney AT dogbert.cc.ndsu.NoDak DOT edu
Information Technology Services         (701) 231-1076 (Voice)
Room 242-J6, IACC Building              (701) 231-8541 (Fax)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164

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