Hi,
Sure network backups are a great idea, but as someone has already pointed out -
it isn't cheap to do a large site.
We have over three thousand workstations connected on our local and global
networks. Most of these machines are NT with disk drives of 4G or greater. We
do not let our users backup data themselves. Instead, we have a few assigned
network drives where each user will save their data to a server. We then backup
the server. If a user is stupid enough to keep vital information on their hard
disk and they have a hard disk failure and lose it all - tough luck. We have
told our users this and they understand.
Our servers are large and mean. To make backups quicker we are currently
putting in an ATM card purely for ADSM. This means that each server will have a
Token Ring card (16Mbps) for normal business traffic, and the ATM (155Mbps) for
data backups. This works great, but as mentioned, it isn't cheap.
We set directory limits on our servers so users can't just keep loading garbage
into the servers. A lot depends upon the sophistication of your users. Our
users save only work-related data onto the network drives. They can (and do)
put all their crap and jpg and wav files on their local disk - for we scan our
servers for large files over certain limits and for jpg and wav files.
We can manage the whole ADSM system from one central location and this is great
for large national and international systems. Also, we can use the one ADSM
server package to backup NT, OS/2, Notes, AIX and SQL just by having different
client agents. In our system the clients are actually servers (file servers,
database servers, Notes servers.. you get the picture). We will soon be putting
a few Macintoshes on ADSM also!
My only concern, as with most centralized systems, the failure of a main ADSM
server can impact the recoverability of your data. But, this is a generic
problem with all centralized systems, and not specific to ADSM. To overcome
this we put in multiple ADSM servers so they can backup each other. Once again,
its gonna cost to do this.
As someone mentioned in a reply, "data is the life blood of the corporation" -
not a truer word has been spoken. Without data, we would not survive (Financial
Markets & Treasury systems). We have made a decision that it is worth spending
the money to ensure data recovery, rather than take the risk of losing some
vital information that may cost us much more than the purchase of ADSM.
From an operational view-point, our older tape system (4G DAT units in each
server) required multiple tape changes on large systems and we moved about 100
tapes a day. This worked out to one person spending 2 to 3 hours a day in
managing and moving tapes. Now, with ADSM we can do the whole operation in half
an hour. This saves us many man hours and frees up our operators to do other
tasks.
Finally, ADSM is but a tool, and it is your responsibility to ensure you are
properly managing your data. This means keeping a close eye on what is being
backed up, checking storage capacity etc etc. ADSM takes a lot of pain and
leg-work out of the equation, but you, as the Data Administrator (or whatever
you are called) has to keep a watchful eye over the operation.
Hope this helps.
Regards
Shane
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