> One of our customers is looking to bring a Network Appliance file server
> on line 1st quarter 1999.   There will be as much as 450 GB of data,
> home directories for most users and hundreds of thousands of small files
> in lots of directories.   I am having nightmares already!


We are, to our best knowledge, the largest Network Appliance Filer house
running backups to ADSM...currently we have 75 NetApp filers - the largest
of which is currently 240g, but with the 700 series out, those are
growing rapidly.

We've pushed NetApp to push IBM for an ADSM client - IBM refuses stating
that NFS mounting them works and indeed it does, but it turns into quite
a cumbersome task when you have over 70 of them that need hand tending.

We have ADSM v3.2 running on AIX v4.  We have a 12 hour backup window in
which we need daily runs on all 70+ filers.  We have several different
'homespun' itterations of NetApp->ADSM backups running trying to see
what is the best way to do them with the best throughput.  The best as
far as accounting for WHAT on the filer is getting backed up is also
very admin intensive.  Currently we're running about 5 different
styles - only two are proving to work with any sort of accuracy and
consistancy.

I won't clog the list with them unless there are people interested - but
if you want to talk more, drop me an email at micki AT synopsys DOT com and I'll
be more than happy to outline our methods to you.  Unfortunitly, I think
they're as close to a client as we'll see for quite sometime.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Michelle Duncan                           micki AT synopsys DOT com
Storage Systems Administrator            pager: 650.940.3353
Synopsys, Inc.                           phone: 650.943.5464

 "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if
            you just sit there."  --Will Rogers