Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!rice!sun-spots-request From: jrg@apple.com (John R. Galloway) Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun Subject: Backup stragety in a network environment, what tools exist? Keywords: Networks Message-ID: <28358@apple.Apple.COM> Date: 25 Apr 89 17:14:15 GMT Sender: usenet@rice.edu Organization: Galloway Research Lines: 18 Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu Original-Date: 4 Apr 89 09:23:44 GMT X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 7, Issue 247, message 8 of 15 One of my current clients has a large network of Suns, diskless and diskfull 3/50's, 3/60's, 386i's, NFS servers and of couse ND servers. Their current policy is to shutdown the NFS servers for nightly backup. I find this somewhat annoying since then my diskless node is basically (if not completely when the ND server, which is also an NFS server is down) useless. The rational seems to be that if not shutdown the backups are indeterminate, if you want to restore you can't tell for sure what tape to uses since a file (particularly one in an ND partition?) might or might not have been backed up. It seems like some sort of network administrative tool is needed here to manage backups. The situation is even worse if you include managing the backup of diskFULL workstation in a uniform way withOUT the need to bother the stations user (i.e. by the MIS dept.). What exists along these lines? How do other large sites handle these issues? apple!jrg John R. Galloway, Jr. contract programmer, San Jose, Ca These are my views, NOT Apple's, I am a GUEST here, not an employee!!