We are (very) successfully backing up UNIX and NT Servers with ADSM (on
AIX, 3494 & 3590).

We are looking into the possibility of backing up a number (approx
1,000) of the NT PCs around the organisation which have all this disk
space on them which people seem to like to use, instead of the central
LAN servers.  The corporate policy has always been that if it is
important then store it centrally.  This policy is breaking down
somewhat with the amount of data people want to keep and the already
available disk space on their local PC, which is free.  The only snag
is there is no proper backup solution in place.

I imagine many other larger organisations have struggled with this.  Do
we keep data centrally, or provide a distributed backup solution for PCs.

I am sure ADSM can do the job.  We have the server capacity - I think.
We would need more client licenses of course.  But the administrative
overhead would be quite significant.

If we did this we would use user initiated backups, and only backup
specific directories eg C:\data.  All our PCs have pretty much standard
setups so we wouldn't want to backup the complete system for each &
every PC.  And I imagine we would use separate storage pools from our
existing pools, without any collocation set.

I would be keen to hear how other people have solved this particular
problem.  Has anybody got a White paper or anything examining the pros
& cons of the two scenarios.

Regards,
Simon