FYI:

Being an IBM Premier Business Partner, I addressed this question with our
Tivoli Channel rep.

Here is an IBM Sales Flash on the subject of BMR:


                            Bare Metal Restore
                      And IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Below is an account from an IBM SE who has sold plenty BMR solutions with
out selling a Veritas product or any other 3rd party product.

We can almost always provide a customized solution that is as good or
better than BMR.  This approach requires some additional selling.  BMR is
not unique in its ability to boot from a network image and restore.  The
value proposition that BMR brought was that it would integrate with
recovery software "under the covers" and provided one piece of glass for
all platforms.  If you look at the documentation, it is pretty evident that
BMR has four distinct solutions for bare metal restore:  one for each of
the platforms that they support.   For the UNIX platforms they basically
mimic the solutions provided by the OS vendor:  NIM for AIX, Jumpstart for
Sun Solaris, and Ignite for HP-UX.  With WinNT/2K, they have basically
automated the procedure that we have documented in the "bare metal restore"
redbook and the "using TSM with Win2K" redbook.

Generally a customer is only interested in one, or sometimes two of the
platforms that BMR supports.  I generally listen to the customers concerns
and have them tell me what they really need.  Contrary to popular belief
BMR does not come out to the box fully configured, there is quite a bit
work to do after the software is installed.  I generally point out that
with only an incremental bit of effort, the customer can have a solution
customized for their environment without having to buy (or have the hassle
of working with) a third party product.  I also suggest  that there could
be a lapse in support when the OS is updated.  The OS recovery tools are
updated at the same time as the OS so this exposure does not exist in this
case.  This argument has been received very well in UNIX environments, but
unfortunately WinTel sites generally want a shrink-wrapped solution.

A bit of good news is that help is on the way for AIX.  Sysback6000 is
scheduled to provide BMR-like functionality and TSM integration by the end
of the year.  Ghost, Ultraback and Christie are planning solutions for
Win2000, but I have not had the opportunity to test any of them.   I would
like to see us build "bare metal" capability into the Wintel platform.  I
have scripted procedures on more than one occasion and it is not nearly as
difficult as one might think.  The lack of a packaged bare metal restore
capability is one of the primary reasons that we will have an uphill battle
gaining marketshare in the Wintel space.  The other two are the lack of an
integrated HSM solution (sorry, but otg is not the answer) and a usable
administrative interface.

To net is all out, the approach that I have found to work best is to
"de-mystify" the bare metal process.    Show BMR for what it really is
collection of network booting tools that call backup software.   Let them
know that much of this functionality is provided to them "free" by OS
vender.   Basically, inform the customer that there are other solutions
available and that more are on the way


Ken Sedlacek
AIX/TSM/UNIX Administrator
ksedlacek AT kyrus DOT com

IBM Certified Specialist: RS/6000 AIX v4.3 Support
IBM Certified Specialist: RS/6000 SP & PSSP 3
Tivoli Certified Consultant - Tivoli Storage Manager v4.1