Anthony -

Here are some thoughts on desktop backup:
Don't. If you can convince your manangement have them institute Home
Directories on file servers and back up the file servers only. If it's too
late for that try to restrict the users to keeping everything in the "my
Documents" directory or a standard "Data" directory of your choosing and
backup only that directory. If that doesn't work then you will come to the
same fate we have and create a large include/exclude client option set list
on the ADSM server.

Other considerations:
We retain 3 versions. each version for 60 days and if deleted 90 days
Use Windows NT instead of 95, NT allows ADSM to run as a service and  95
does not. This means users tend to close it and don't back up. We,
unfortunately, have Win 95.
Use a good software distribution system like Tivoli, no plug for Tivoli but
it has a good reputation from what I've heard. It probably works better than
Seagates Wininstall product which we suffer with.

Final thoughts:
We have 26,000 Win95 clients in our operation and we had to make some
"special" enhancements to rollout this many clients. Our first hurdle was
coming up with a naming convention. We settled on a nodename consisting of
the users lastname_firstinitial-officenumber. In other words if your name is
John Doe and you work in office # 0001 ( we have offices which range from
0001 to 0999 ) your node name is Doe_J-0001. Now, in order to accomplish
this systematically we wrote an applet in C++ which the user enters his/her
information, the applet checks a DAT file with the office numbers and the
corresponding ADSM server, and edits the OPT file. It has worked pretty
well. We have had a few issues with duplicate user names in the same office
but we have them append an "A" to their office number.

good luck!

CR

__________________________________________________
Cris Robinson
Sr. Technical Analyst
Enterprise Storage Management / ADSM
Liberty Mutual Insurance
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
603.431.8400.54837
mailto:cris.robinson AT libertymutual DOT com

        -----Original Message-----
        From:   Kelly J. Lipp [SMTP:lipp AT STORSOL DOT COM]
        Sent:   Thursday, July 08, 1999 12:23 PM
        To:     ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
        Subject:        Re: Win95/NT Desktop Backups

        The first thing to decide is how much of the local disks are you
going to
        backup?  What is your current procedure for handling the death of a
desktop?
        Do you simply replace it and it gets its personality from a server
        somewhere?  If this is the case, you probably can get by with
backing up
        certain directories, like c:\my documents\*.  If your death of
desktop
        restoration plan involves replacing a dead disk and then restoring
it from
        someplace, then you'll want to back up the entire disk to ADSM.
This is
        much harder and with 3-4000 desktops, lots of data.

        You can use a client option set to control what is backed up.
Ensure that
        the client option set option overrides the dsm.opt file on the
individual
        PCs.

        You might want to use open registration to register all of these
clients.
        Easy for you, unless you have some standard naming scheme you want
to
        employ.  Be a little careful here as you can have a mess on your
hands.
        Open registration places all nodes registered this way in the
STANDARD
        policy domain.

        Limit your data, maximize your control and plan, plan, plan and you
should
        be ok.

        Kelly J. Lipp
        Storage Solutions Specialists, Inc.
        PO Box 51313
        Colorado Springs CO 80949
        719-531-5926
        www.storsol.com
        lipp AT storsol DOT com

        -----Original Message-----
        From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU]On 
Behalf
Of
        Jones, Anthony
        Sent: Thursday, July 08, 1999 10:02 AM
        To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
        Subject: Win95/NT Desktop Backups


        Hello ADSM Guru's,

        We are currently not backing up our desktops to TSM (a.k.a. ADSM),
but would
        like to in the very near future.  The client base would be about
3000 to
        4000 desktops.

        What are some of the standards used in the desktop backup arena?
(i.e.
        VerExist, VerDeleted...)
        Pros & cons of the 95/NT client on the desktop?

        What are some of the nightmare's that you have run into with large
client
        bases?

        Thanks in advance.
        Anthony A. Jones
        316-828-2432
        Business Continuity & Data Storage Management
        Koch Industries, Inc.