> >> May I know some of the reasons why AMANDA edges over other traditional
> >> Unix backup utilities.
> >
> > stable
> > does what it claims
> > source available
> > well supported
> > good, unique scheduling module
> > networked
> > scales well from a single system to moderatly large installations
>
> Also that it uses native utilities for the backup images, so you
> can do a restore without having to reinstall Amanda first.

This one is more important than it might first appear.  In ADSM if you
lose ADSM's database or it gets corrupted and you can't restore it, you
can't restore anything else, even if the tapes your backups are on are
perfectly fine.  With amanda you can lose everything and still be able
to restore from a tape with standard unix tools.

Secondly, and I'm no ADSM/TSM expert, but the folks who run it here aren't
yet offering OS X backups.  I'm not sure if that's because the product
doesn't support it yet or because of some other problem.  Just this week
someone reported here getting amanda to do OS X backups ok.

But it should be noted that there are advantages of ADSM/TSM as well.
One is that the client can request a backup asyncronously.  Handy for
e.g. the laptop user who is only connected sporadically.  People have
hacked up various workarounds for this for amanda, but it doesn't do it
out of the box, yet.

Another is that ADSM/TSM recognizes a mobile machine whose IP is changing.
If you backup a laptop at work, then take it home or wherever and request
a fresh backup, it does the right thing.  Amanda would require a bit of
work to do this.

Another is their "incrementals forever".  I've argued this one both
ways, but it can be handy in some situations.  ADSM/TSM takes one full
dump when the client is first backed up and then does only incrementals
from there on.  They can do this because they backup files rather than
filesystems, and keep track of everything in the previously-mentioned
database.  The big advantage to this is when you want to put a machine
behind a slow, overcommitted, or expensive network link.  You could for
example do a full dump on-site first, then move the machine to the remote
location with the slow link and it will only need to do incremenals from
there on.

-Mitch