On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 09:28:29AM -0500, Stewart, Brian C wrote:
> Wow... with that many small files the 3 hours to calculate the size of the
> job is probably the least of your time concerns...
>  
> Have you considered using a block level backup (not to sound like a
> NetBackup Sales Rep)

We have.  It doesn't work - we had a call open for several months as
Veritas tried to resolve the issues.  They had duplicated the problem
but were unable to fix before we gave up.  Windows clients with Solaris
master server.  We ended up being forced into using Windows mount points
which the Advanced Client doesn't support at all for block-level backups
so were really sunk then.  

There are also a bunch of other gross limitations - the target volume
must be *exactly* the same size as the source volume.  That means that
if you happen to change your underlying hardware and can't get volumes
the exact same size any more (which happened to us as we were migrating
from Symmetrix to EVA), you're out of luck.  A larger volume wouldn't
suffice.  

If you're using block-level backups, make really sure you've done some
restore testing - we had some backups that claimed to be successful but
the files weren't restorable.

Veritas may have fixed these issues in the last 6 months so I could be
passing on old information but you really do need to do some serious
testing of your recoverability (not that you shouldn't anyway...).

-- 
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org