From: chuck@edsi.plexus.COM (Chuck Tomasi)
Subject: Re: HP-UX Backup Question
Organization: Enterprise Data Systems Incorporated, Appleton WI
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 12:46:43 GMT

hangh@staff.tc.umn.edu (Tha^`y Cu*ng) writes:

:)Now the question is IS FBACKUP, TAR, CPIO, ETC. AN OPTION IN MY 
:)CASE, IF IT IS, WHAT BACKUP SPEED WILL I GET OUT OF EACH OF THEM?.  
:)Thank you very much in advance, since I am using a friend account in 
:)order to post this, please respond either to the newsgroup or 
:)bnguyen@jeep.atk.com. 

A quick comment, then on with my answer.  Please use word wrap.  Your
lines are way too long and can confuse the ____ out of some news
readers.  If you aren't sure how to employ word wrap on your current
editor please ask your System Administrator.  If you are or he doesn't
know pose it to the net, but be sure to press return a little more
often.

I have been in a similar situation for quite some time, but I have been
using a couple 8mm drives to do my dirty work.  You can do backups via
NFS, but it means a few things.  First, cpio and tar are way too slow.
I have about seven machines ranging from a couple hundred MB to 1 GB or
more on them.  The grand total of all my backups is still unknown.  To
backup my usual 180,000 via NFS using tar or cpio takes over 30 hours.
Far too long for my tastes.  The extended incrementals (or differential)
would take about six hours each night.  Still too long since these
machines are used on all three shifts.

Fbackup is what I am currently using and it seems to do a decent job.
A full backup is taking almost seven hours and incrementals are just
over an hour.  I can live with that.  If you go over NFS you must
consider the fact that root needs access to all the systems he/she is
backing up.  This means you'll have to "punch a security hole" in the
kernel so that root can modify file access times on other systems.
Fbackup is also quick on the restore.  In 10 minutes I can have any file
off the tape.  Such is not the case with tar or cpio on an 8mm unit.

Omniback's drawback is the licensing mechanism IMHO.  That is one of the
main reasons I am investigating using Quick Restore for Unix by
Workstation Solutions.  I'm an old TBR user and know the people at WSI
pretty well by this time.  The installation of the product was simple
enough, the commands aren't much different than tar, the tapes are tar
compatible (for people who don't own QR), and it has some other nice
networking features, but you only have to buy the software once and
that's it.  Go ahead and add and delete nodes at will.  You don't have
node licenses to worry about.  That's important when the total number of
workstations at our site is about 40-50!

While my evaluation of the product is not complete I still need to
determine if performance is going to beat that of fbackup.  Restoring
certainly will due to the fact that QR uses online index files and
direct-to-block positioning of the tape.

#include <hp/disclaimer.h>
#include <ws/disclaimer.h>
-- 
Chuck Tomasi             |   "A munk a clone and a Ferengi
chuck@edsi.plexus.COM    |    decide to go bowling together..."
spool!cserver!edsi!chuck |             -Data "The Outrageous Okana"
------<Enterprise Data Systems Incorporated, Appleton Wisconsin>------