I'm not sure what you're saying that NetWorker can do.  Are you saying:

* that NW will take a series of backups that were backed up to an
advanced file type device, and then multiplex them together when cloning
them.
* you can do more than one clone at a time from an advanced file type
device

I've tested both, and neither are true, at least in 7.3 (not running
7.3.2).  NetWorker still sees the advanced file type device as a tape
drive, even though it's tape, and therefore will not allow multiple
simultaneous reads from it.  In fact, the only way it's supporting
simultaneous reads and writes is that it's tricked itself out by
creating a read-only version of the same device.  This creates a number
of weird things, like all the savesets being listed twice in an mminfo
command, for example.  Very strange if you're not used to it.

So did I misunderstand what you're saying it can do? 

---
W. Curtis Preston
Author of O'Reilly's Backup & Recovery and Using SANs and NAS
VP Data Protection
GlassHouse Technologies

-----Original Message-----
From: networker-bounces AT backupcentral DOT com
[mailto:networker-bounces AT backupcentral DOT com] On Behalf Of Dag Nygren
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 8:41 AM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] How NW cloning & multiplexing REALLY works

> 
> >>mark wragge wrote:

> >>No they don't. Save sets on disk devices are not multiplexed.
Cloning or 
> >>staging from disk will read save sets sequentially - there is no
other 
> >>way it could be done.
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Why couldn't you do parallel reads from the disk?
> >  
> >
> In theory this is possible, but in current versions it is not written 
> that way. You can only read one stream from a disk device at a time.

According to the release notes for 7.3.2 Networker can now read multiple
concurrent streams from an advanced file type device, but only write one
at the time. I actually tested this some time ago and it does work.

Best
Dag

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