Been in the industry for more than 18 years, and especially in the storage
and backup/recovery business for more than 7 years... I have seen,
tested and worked on a lot different storage products here in the States and
abroad, so here are the answers to yr questions:

How good do you rate TSM on a scale of 1 to 10.  (10 being best) ?
I will give TSM a  9.4 because I believe it is the best available storage
solution in its category... as you can see I use the word "solution" and
not program or package, because TSM is a solution... you just have to do
your homework and put it to work as most appropriate for yr environment.
9.4 because I believe there is still room for improvement... always...
We just finished a 6.8 TB TSM 3.7.3.6/8 / SAN (Fibre/1Gb Ether) solution and
it worked like a "swiss clock", and most important... it worked the
first time (no reinstallations, no reconfigurations, no voodoo) , the only
special thing that I did was... to read the manual and instructions
line by line.

Would you definitely buy it again, or would you shop around ?
Yes, I would buy it again... most definitely... and for various reasons, but
especially for the functionality, scalability, and support.

Good luck on yr decision.

Cheers.

Othonas


"Sattler, Lynn" wrote:

> We are reconsidering our backup software.
>
> We are a pretty large unix shop (5 Terrabytes to backup nightly) and are
using some HP Omniback and a lot of Veritas Netbackup.  Mostly HP-UX.
>
> We have a large Lotus Notes Rel 5 implementation on AIX (600 gig on its
way to 1.2 Terrabytes).
>
> We are studying robot technology and SAN's.
>
> Tivoli is selling and Netbackup is trying to stay in the shop.
>
> How good do you rate TSM on a scale of 1 to 10.  (10 being best).
>
> Would you definately buy it again, or would you shop around.
>
> My gut feeling is that everybody has some complaints with their backup
solution.
>
> Lynn Sattler
> Dana Corp
> Toledo Oh
> lynn.sattler AT dana DOT com