Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!dali.cs.montana.edu!ogicse!littlei!intelisc!intelisc.iSC.intel.com
From: karinc@intelisc.iSC.intel.com (Karin Coffee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.novell
Subject: Report on Palindrome Archive System
Keywords: archive, simple, fast
Message-ID: <1177@intelisc.isc.intel.com>
Date: 6 Mar 91 00:08:00 GMT
Sender: karinc@isc.intel.com
Organization: Supercomputer Systems Division, Intel Corp.
Lines: 51

I have completed my installation of the Palindrome software and an Exabyte
8200sx 2.2 Gb tape drive.  So far.....it's great!

I have been running with an ancient Mountain Tape streaming tape drive and
the Mountain Tape Software.  Last week I did a complete backup of
my data volume (SYS1).  It took 50 minutes to backup and 50 minutes to
verify, and I had to use 9 tapes to get the 245+ Mb of data.  To backup
and verify I had to swap all 9 tapes twice.

The installation of the Palindrome software was very easy.  The instruction
manual is very good and easy to read.  You can start with a default set of
rules to get going and change them if they don't archive your files as often
(or too often) for your taste.  Installing the Exabyte drive was easy.  The
only hitch we had was that we thought we had ordered an external drive, and
we received an internal drive.  Exabyte had the correct one to us within a week.

If you order this, I would definitely order the drive direct from Exabyte.
Palindrome uses the Exabyte drive, and tacks on an additional $2,000 for 
the pleasure of having their name added to the drive.

So, this afternoon, I ran an automatic archive of the entire file server
(both volumes SYS and SYS1).  It took 90 minutes, used 13% of one tape,
labelled the tape for me, and told me to leave that tape in the drive for
a modified backup tomorrow.  I am currently running with the default settings,
so I will only rotate tapes once per week.

Thus far, I have been very impressed with the Palindrome software.  It does
take approximately 1 mb of space on each volume that you protect with it,
but it also performs disk grooming, and will ask you if you want to migrate
files if they haven't been accessed (it uses the Netware access bit) for
x number of weeks.  The default is 12 weeks.

In order to get a clean backup it has to run when the network is quiet, and
the user that it runs under has to be supervisor equivalent.  However, they
do offer a switch that runs the archive in "quiet mode".  When in quiet
mode, the software ignores all input from the keyboard.  I plan on 
continuing to run my autorun files from Mountain Tape so I can kick off a
keyworks file at 2am to start the backup.

That's my critique of the installation and first running.  It appears to 
be clean and efficient.

If you have any questions, feel free to post or email.


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
   Karin Coffee				Intel Supercomputer Systems Division 
   Network/System Administration	15201 NW Greenbrier Parkway  
   The LAN Lords 			Beaverton, OR  97201
   karinc@isc.intel.com 		(503) 629-7693
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-