Multi-platform Backup Solution

--On June 27, 2005 5:50:39 PM -0700 Richard Crispin
<rcrispinwatarts.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:

> Hi All
> I work in a multi-platform environment (Mac, Windows, Linux, Unix) of
> over 120 computers. We have been beta testing a backup solution that I
> had high hopes for. The company recently dropped software development and
> we do not have a backup solution.

EMC's Legato Networker might do what you're looking for. EMC recently
purchased Dantz's Retrospect.

<http://www.legato.com/products/networker/index.htm>

I don't use the product (we use EMC's Replistor, a Windows only product) so
I'm not sure it meets all your requirements, but it does claim Windows,
Linux/Unix and Macintosh support.

On one point you have "not require an administrator to do a simple
restore." Are you looking for something that allows end-users to do
restores, or just a particular person that can do restores but is not
further trained as an administrator?

Kevin

I'd have to urge you to look at multiple solutions.

The Mac backup market is pretty weak. In the professional backup arena,
you have Retrospect. That's about it.

On the PC side, there's a whole host of excellent backup tools ranging
from enterprise heavyweights like Veritas down to the sort of shareware
synchronization software that comprises the bulk of the Mac backup
software market.

So, you can probably hit most of your requirements on the PC side, and
then only have to suffer Retrospect or some less powerful solution
(like a synchronization program) on the Mac.

Also, consider the benefit of networked home directories. This provides
a very easy method to keep a user's files stored on the network, and
they can be easily detached to permit roaming usage. This is relatively
painless to set up in a PC/Active Directory environment, and I can't
imagine it's harder under MacOS X Server.

Then your backup strategy is simply backing up the files on this
server. Every time a user logs in on the local network, their files are
synchronized, and you have their latest snapshot right there on hand.

--Nik

> We have used Retrospect in the past for Mac, Windows but unless the
> recent version works very different from versions 5 or 6 it is not the
> solution for us.

We have deployed Retrospect Professional 7 in a small, three-computer
(unfortunately purely Windows *sigh*) environment just last week.
Setting everything up was fairly straight-forward even without having
read the documentation -- which is a printed book as it should be! --
from cover to cover (although I do have to admit that I was familiar
with Retrospect's slightly odd UI philosophy from using Retrospect
Express on an older Mac).


> What I would like is software that:

Judging from the documentation and personal experience so far:

> 1) can have a customized backup strategy for individual computers
>     i.e what is backed up and when (very awkward to do in retrospect)

Very easy in 7: on a per-script basis, you select what to back up from
a complete list of all available Retrospect clients. Just create as
many backup scripts as you want/need for each (custom-selected group
of) computer(s).


> 2) is fast (retrospect 5 and 6 are very slow)

Retrospect 7 is not a speed demon, but we currently get an overall
throughput via LAN of about 400MBps (with AES-128 encryption, but
without compression; with 250GB external hard drives as back-up media,
and about 20GB of total data, we don't need compression).


> 3) can back up fast to disk and then at a later time migrate the
> backup to tape

Is supported and rather straight-forward in 7.


> 4) have at least 2 independent active backup sets

You can have as many independent backup sets on as many backup media as
you need. "Even" media rotation and media recycling can be fully
automated.


> 5) not require an administrator to do a simple restore

Not sure on this one.


> 1) can save the files in a readable format (i.e not encoded)

Retrospect 7 can duplicate drives, i.e., it will use the same file
selection method as for backups, but instead of writing files to a
backup set in Dantz's proprietary format, it will simply copy them to
the target media.


> 2) does not require us to write our own scripts to get it to work

Creating scripts in Retrospect 7 is supported by wizards, which I found
to be very easy to use. We literally ran our first manual backup in a
minute or two after installing Retrospect and without having referred
to the documentation beforehand at all.

I do realize that what I wrote above may sound like a Dantz ad ;), but
I was, indeed, pleasantly surprised by the ease of use of this
application, and it has worked perfectly for us so far, one huge plus
being the ability to back up "open" files, i.e., files that are in use
by an application during the backup operation.

So, if you have any specific questions regarding setup and operation of
Retrospect, let me know and I'll try to answer them.


Jochen.

On 6/28/05 16:21, "Nik" <GerberiNik.net> wrote:

> The Mac backup market is pretty weak. In the professional backup arena,
> you have Retrospect. That's about it.
>
> On the PC side, there's a whole host of excellent backup tools ranging
> from enterprise heavyweights like Veritas down to the sort of shareware
> synchronization software that comprises the bulk of the Mac backup
> software market.

On the Mac side, in addition to Retrospect, which is a fine low to lower
middle end backup tool, you have:

BRU, NetVault, Galaxy, Time Navigator are all "professional" backup systems,
along with open source systems like Amanda.

There's a LOT more to the Mac backup market than just Retrospect.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

>I'd have to urge you to look at multiple solutions.
>
>The Mac backup market is pretty weak. In the professional backup
>arena, you have Retrospect. That's about it.

That is not true any longer.

There are a least three additional products that I am aware that
match, or considerably exceed the capabilities of Retrospect. Some
can probably be labelled "enterprise" level (at least from a pricing
point of view!). Note, these are solutions that run the server
component on Mac OS X - there are several others that have OS X
clients but require a server of a different flavour to run the backup
software.

There is BRU from Tolis group
http://www.tolisgroup.com/


NetVault from BakBone
http://www.bakbone.com/


Time Navigator from Atempo
http://www.atempo.com/


Note that, at least in the case of Netvault, these products make
Retrospect look VERY cheap. In fact the reseller who quoted us on
Netvault said that the 20 tape LTO-2 library was asked for was the
"cheap" part of the quote. That is at least partly due to the fact
they work on different pricing model than EMC-Dantz, ie they are
expecting you to back up your servers not all your individual
workstations.

I can't comment on how these products meeting the requirements of the
original post as the pricing issues have stopped us seriously
evaluating these options so far. However, we are getting so
frustrated with Retrospect that it won't be long before we have to do
something - even if it is looking seriously at Retrospect on Windows
to back up our Macs.

Regards,

Adrian Smith
Centenary Institute
Sydney, Australia

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nik [mailto:GerberiNik.net]

> Also, consider the benefit of networked home directories. This provides
> a very easy method to keep a user's files stored on the network, and
> they can be easily detached to permit roaming usage. This is relatively
> painless to set up in a PC/Active Directory environment, and I can't
> imagine it's harder under MacOS X Server.

I highly recommend using server space as the primary storage rather than
local disk space.

It's wasteful and expensive to backup the entire desktop (use disk images of
"perfect" computers when setting them up and keep them for restorations
after disk failures). At the same time, it's hard to concoct a desktop
backup that only includes what should be backed up in part because too many
users either don't pay any attention to where their files are saved or have
their own ideas about where to put them (especially on Macs). Furthermore,
the availability of a desktop on the network can be variable.

Nik is referring to what Microsoft calls Roaming Profiles. With them, a copy
of your Profile directory (C:\Documents and Settings\username\) is kept on
the server, it is downloaded when you login to a computer and uploaded when
you log out. Pros: server copy easy to back up, most important data is kept
there by default, files are local while in use, preferences follow the user
from computer to computer. Cons: those who neglect to log out do not have
current data on the server, Profile directory can contain a lot of data that
doesn't need backing up, large Profile directories can take a while to
download & upload.

We don't use Roaming Profiles, we use automounted directories. Each user has
their own and programs are configured to save to them by default. Our users
pretty much stick to a single computer so having program settings be
portable is not much use to us.

Original OS X Server home directories reside on the server and only the
server, when you log in it is automounted and appears to be local, but
isn't. This means trivial files like web caches are taking up server space
and must be transferred between server and desktop constantly. Most of the
time on an Ethernet network the lag is negligible but when working with
large files it can be a problem. More annoying is we've found that sometimes
the home directories do no mount at login so the user is presented with a
generic home directory and must restart and login again to get their home
directory. Naturally, network home directories are not an option for
laptops.

Tiger Server has added synchronized home directories which work very much
like Microsoft's Roaming Profiles where the home directory's contents are
copied to the local drive then synchronized at login/logout. I don't know if
the client must also be running Tiger to use them.

If you do want to back up individual machines, Veritas NetBackup has
"agents" for Windows, Linux and Mac OS. I'm sure it's not cheap. But a good
backup system is worth spending significant time and money on. Backups
should be one of your top three priorities. As such, it's also worth
spending the time to learn the systems well and/or scripting to make them
work.

This message is already long but I also want to point out rsnapshot as a
backup tool for Unix and OS X. It's written in Perl and uses rsync with hard
links to create great incremental backups that take up minimal space. We
don't use rsnapshot but our backup scripts use the same principles. It's not
for making bootable backups but for everything else, it's great.
http://www.rsnapshot.org/

At 5:50 PM -0700 2005/06/27, Richard Crispin wrote:
>Hi All
>I work in a multi-platform environment (Mac, Windows, Linux, Unix) of
>over 120 computers. We have been beta testing a backup solution that
>I had high hopes for. The company recently dropped software
>development and we do not have a backup solution.
>
>We have used Retrospect in the past for Mac, Windows but unless the
>recent version works very different from versions 5 or 6 it is not
>the solution for us. What I would like is software that:
>1) can have a customized backup strategy for individual computers
> i.e what is backed up and when (very awkward to do in retrospect)
>2) is fast (retrospect 5 and 6 are very slow)
>3) can back up fast to disk and then at a later time migrate the backup to
> tape (could not figure out how to do this in retrospect 5 or 6)
>4) have at least 2 independent active backup sets
>5) not require an administrator to do a simple restore
>
>Not necessary but prefer that the software
>1) can save the files in a readable format (i.e not encoded)
>2) does not require us to write our own scripts to get it to work
>
>I am willing to entertain suggestions that do not meet all of the
>first 5 but the strategy would need to be exceptional in how it works.

        Have you considered using rsync (runs on Macs, Windows,
Linux, & UNIX) to do disk backup to Xserve RAIDs (or whatever), and
backing up servers to tape? You'll save a lot of money on commercial
backup software if it doesn't have to run on all 4 platforms and all
your workstations.

        rsync is going to be the fastest option, with or without ssh,
with or without compression. Simplest is probably to give each user a
home directory on a server, then "rsync --archive --delete ~/
SERVER:/home/$USER/" in cron (or at spool on Windows) at your desired
interval. This assumes that each user has a home directory on
"SERVER", and can ssh to it. With older versions of rsync you might
need "--rsh=ssh". You can turn on compression with "-z". I use the
following to avoid wasteful churn

--exclude=.DS_Store
--exclude=Library/Caches
--exclude=Music/iTunes
--exclude=Library/Safari

        For full-system backups, I also use "--exclude=Network
--exclude=.Spotlight-*"

        That said, I've reported problems to Apple where rsync fails
(too many files?). It's pretty annoying, but also unusual. If I was
running daily, might never crop up.

        With this type of scenario, you have lots of control over the
frequency, since it's whatever you put into crontab on each machine.
You could also run the rsyncs centrally, but would have to do some
more configuration to keep the scripts & machines straight. Could
also run against rsyncd, which would avoid ssh and be more efficient,
but doesn't provide real security. Centrally managed, this might be a
nonissue.

        The nice thing here is that the tape backup becomes almost
trivially simple. You just back up /home on the server(s) nightly,
and users can always get stuff from their disk backups by logging
into the server via AFP/SMB/NFS/ssh/sftp/etc.

        For 2 backups sets, just create another set of RAIDs, create
/home2, and make a minor change to the crontab script, or make it
take BASEDIR as an argument. Or you can double the servers, if you
need that level of redundancy.


                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

At 2:17 PM -0700 2005/06/28, Kevin van Haaren wrote:
>--On June 27, 2005 5:50:39 PM -0700 Richard Crispin
><rcrispinwatarts.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:

>EMC's Legato Networker might do what you're looking for. EMC recently
>purchased Dantz's Retrospect.
>
><http://www.legato.com/products/networker/index.htm>
>
>I don't use the product (we use EMC's Replistor, a Windows only product) so
>I'm not sure it meets all your requirements, but it does claim Windows,
>Linux/Unix and Macintosh support.

        Their Mac client (as of the last version I tested) didn't
include a GUI tool (mostly used for restores). It's not terribly
complicated, but telling Mac users to run the CLI version and how
would probably be an issue.

        We do restore (from tape) for users -- they're probably not
going to be able to load tapes into the library and inventory them
without admin assistance, no matter what product you use.


                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Pepper [mailto:pepperreppep.com]
 

> Have you considered using rsync (runs on Macs, Windows,
> Linux, & UNIX) to do disk backup to Xserve RAIDs (or whatever), and
> backing up servers to tape? You'll save a lot of money on commercial
> backup software if it doesn't have to run on all 4 platforms and all
> your workstations.

Can you recommend an implementation of rsync for Windows? I'm only familiar
with installing Cygwin to get it (as well as getting SSH so you don't have
to run an open rsync daemon on the receiving end) and that's pretty
cumbersome to set up.

Also, will rsync on Windows preserve ACLs? Tiger's version of rsync is the
first to preserve OS X's implementation of ACLs (as well as resource forks)
and probably doesn't "just work" on Windows even if you compile it. If
you're just backing up one user's Profile directory maybe preserving ACLs
isn't an issue but if that's the case, using Roaming Profiles is probably a
better choice (they could reside on your Xserve if you enable Samba and make
it part of the Windows Active Directory or NT domain).

> rsync is going to be the fastest option, with or without ssh,
> with or without compression. Simplest is probably to give each user a
> home directory on a server, then "rsync --archive --delete ~/
> SERVER:/home/$USER/" in cron (or at spool on Windows) at your desired
> interval. This assumes that each user has a home directory on
> "SERVER", and can ssh to it. With older versions of rsync you might
> need "--rsh=ssh". You can turn on compression with "-z". I use the
> following to avoid wasteful churn

I've found performance to be better without the compression switch. So much
of people's data are already compressed (mp3, JPEG, video, etc.) the
additional compression attempt just slows it down. It's worthwhile trying it
with and without the switch with your own data to see if it's beneficial in
your situation.

'--partial' can be a good switch to add if there's a problem with the
backups getting interrupted, particularly when large files are involved.

An easy way to find out how long it takes is to use the 'time' command. Just
put it in front of your command and when it completes it'll show the real,
user, and system time used (usually you only care about "real").
'time rsync --archive --delete -z ~/ SERVER:/home/$USER/with-z/'
'time rsync --archive --delete ~/ SERVER:/home/$USER/no-z/'

> That said, I've reported problems to Apple where rsync fails
> (too many files?). It's pretty annoying, but also unusual. If I was
> running daily, might never crop up.

I believe the problem we encountered was when files would be deleted by a
user in mid-backup (faculty burning the midnight oil). We had to implement a
separate "watcher" script to kill it when it got out of control. Perhaps a
Tiger's rsync handles the problem more gracefully.

> With this type of scenario, you have lots of control over the
> frequency, since it's whatever you put into crontab on each machine.
> You could also run the rsyncs centrally, but would have to do some
> more configuration to keep the scripts & machines straight.

Yeah, when you're talking about backing up desktops (and possibly laptops),
it's hard to leave it solely in the hands of the server. Login hooks can be
used to initiate a backup as well as other events such as waking from sleep.

You can make a simple "Go" AppleScript so the user could also initiate an ad
hoc backup (perhaps after finishing something particularly important). It's
simple because the AppleScript provides no feedback regarding the backup's
progress, it just creates a cron job that runs in the background then
removes itself from crontab. I'm using this technique to let users add files
to an archive server.

At 12:07 PM -0400 2005/07/01, Wilcox, Curtis wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
>> From: Chris Pepper [mailto:pepperreppep.com]
>
>> Have you considered using rsync (runs on Macs, Windows,
>> Linux, & UNIX) to do disk backup to Xserve RAIDs (or whatever), and
>> backing up servers to tape? You'll save a lot of money on commercial
>> backup software if it doesn't have to run on all 4 platforms and all
>> your workstations.
>
>Can you recommend an implementation of rsync for Windows? I'm only familiar
>with installing Cygwin to get it (as well as getting SSH so you don't have
>to run an open rsync daemon on the receiving end) and that's pretty
>cumbersome to set up.

        I'm told Cygwin is a 1-click install for current versions,
but don't use it myself.

http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2003-November/007742.html
http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2001-November/000557.html
http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2004-November/011016.html
http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2002-January/001206.html

        You don't have to use rsync, btw -- if you follow this model,
and make it a SMB share, you could use any dumb Windows backup/sync
program to update the server backups. rsync is just the most
efficient. Note that if you aren't running through ssh/rsh/rsyncd,
rsync won't do differential updates, because there's no efficient way
to checksum the file without scanning the whole thing anyway, so it's
faster just to copy whole files if necessary.

>Also, will rsync on Windows preserve ACLs? Tiger's version of rsync is the
>first to preserve OS X's implementation of ACLs (as well as resource forks)
>and probably doesn't "just work" on Windows even if you compile it. If
>you're just backing up one user's Profile directory maybe preserving ACLs
>isn't an issue but if that's the case, using Roaming Profiles is probably a
>better choice (they could reside on your Xserve if you enable Samba and make
>it part of the Windows Active Directory or NT domain).

        No idea.

> > rsync is going to be the fastest option, with or without ssh,
>> with or without compression. Simplest is probably to give each user a
>> home directory on a server, then "rsync --archive --delete ~/
>> SERVER:/home/$USER/" in cron (or at spool on Windows) at your desired
>> interval. This assumes that each user has a home directory on
>> "SERVER", and can ssh to it. With older versions of rsync you might
>> need "--rsh=ssh". You can turn on compression with "-z". I use the
>> following to avoid wasteful churn
>
>I've found performance to be better without the compression switch. So much
>of people's data are already compressed (mp3, JPEG, video, etc.) the
>additional compression attempt just slows it down. It's worthwhile trying it
>with and without the switch with your own data to see if it's beneficial in
>your situation.

        I normally use -z over the Internet, and not over LANs.

>'--partial' can be a good switch to add if there's a problem with the
>backups getting interrupted, particularly when large files are involved.
>
>An easy way to find out how long it takes is to use the 'time' command. Just
>put it in front of your command and when it completes it'll show the real,
>user, and system time used (usually you only care about "real").
>'time rsync --archive --delete -z ~/ SERVER:/home/$USER/with-z/'
>'time rsync --archive --delete ~/ SERVER:/home/$USER/no-z/'

        Yes, I do this. For automated backups it's not relevant, but
good for testing.

> > That said, I've reported problems to Apple where rsync fails
>> (too many files?). It's pretty annoying, but also unusual. If I was
>> running daily, might never crop up.
>
>I believe the problem we encountered was when files would be deleted by a
>user in mid-backup (faculty burning the midnight oil). We had to implement a
>separate "watcher" script to kill it when it got out of control. Perhaps a
>Tiger's rsync handles the problem more gracefully.

        Actually, I confirmed last night that the one I've been
wrestling with is only and issue with -E turned on. I'm not confident
in Tiger's resource fork support in rsync -- rsync tells me it has to
update a lot of resource forks which Qdea's Synchronize Plus X says
are already in sync.

        We have a separate issue where rsyncing an entire running
Linux system to Panther Server via ssh runs out of filehandles on
Panther Server. That system hasn't yet upgraded to Tiger Server, so I
don't know if it's fixed yet.

> > With this type of scenario, you have lots of control over the
>> frequency, since it's whatever you put into crontab on each machine.
>> You could also run the rsyncs centrally, but would have to do some
>> more configuration to keep the scripts & machines straight.
>
>Yeah, when you're talking about backing up desktops (and possibly laptops),
>it's hard to leave it solely in the hands of the server. Login hooks can be
>used to initiate a backup as well as other events such as waking from sleep.

        I think Login/Logout hooks (from loginwindow) are deprecated
(but still supported) in Tiger, perhaps in favor of LaunchD, but I
haven't dug into LaunchD yet.

>You can make a simple "Go" AppleScript so the user could also initiate an ad
>hoc backup (perhaps after finishing something particularly important). It's
>simple because the AppleScript provides no feedback regarding the backup's
>progress, it just creates a cron job that runs in the background then
>removes itself from crontab. I'm using this technique to let users add files
>to an archive server.

        Or call /usr/local/bin/backup.command from crontab, and copy
it into the Dock. .command files are double-clickable.



                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

We have a similar mix of operating systems. We're also chafing at Retrospect's significant limitations in the enterprise market ("reports, we don't need no steenking reports!"), and their growing lack of enthusiasm for the Macintosh market. One of our additional limitations was not wanting to dump several XServes used as backup servers. I've spent the last couple of months (part-time) looking at "enterprise" backup solutions for our environment.

You should take a serious look at Atempo's Time Navigator if you want a single product that meets most (if not all) of your needs. In preliminary discussions with Atempo, I was talking to one of the developers on the second phone call. Their prices aren't as low as Retrospect, but sometimes you get what you pay for. They were the only enterprise level, multi-platform backup vendor that seems to "get" the Macintosh market -- though their MacOS server GUI is based on X-windows.

We plan to evaluate the product in our environment soon.

I haven't actually used it, but you might want to check out BackupPC to
run your backups. It seems to automate a lot of the rsync work. You can
find it at http://backuppc.sourceforge.net.

> At 5:50 PM -0700 2005/06/27, Richard Crispin wrote:
> >Hi All
> >I work in a multi-platform environment (Mac, Windows, Linux, Unix) of
> >over 120 computers. We have been beta testing a backup solution that
> >I had high hopes for. The company recently dropped software
> >development and we do not have a backup solution.
> >
> >We have used Retrospect in the past for Mac, Windows but unless the
> >recent version works very different from versions 5 or 6 it is not
> >the solution for us. What I would like is software that:
> >1) can have a customized backup strategy for individual computers
> > i.e what is backed up and when (very awkward to do in retrospect)
> >2) is fast (retrospect 5 and 6 are very slow)
> >3) can back up fast to disk and then at a later time migrate the
> backup to
> > tape (could not figure out how to do this in retrospect 5 or 6)
> >4) have at least 2 independent active backup sets
> >5) not require an administrator to do a simple restore
> >
> >Not necessary but prefer that the software
> >1) can save the files in a readable format (i.e not encoded)
> >2) does not require us to write our own scripts to get it to work
> >
> >I am willing to entertain suggestions that do not meet all of the
> >first 5 but the strategy would need to be exceptional in how it
> works.
>

I know I am a bit late to the discussion, but traveling put me behind
my reading.

There is a product from IBM/Tivoli, believe it or not, that will do
pretty much what you want. It's called Tivoli Storage Manager (I
don't have a direct URL handy). It supports just about any client
computer you have - Windows, Mac, AIX, Sun, Netware, various other
flavors of Unix, NAS and SAN, etc. It backs up your data to a
central computer that manages the storage, including hard disks,
tape, optical libraries, with automatic migration. It can manage
multiple backup copies, perform incremental backup and restores, and
create archive sets. End users can perform their own restores if
need be. It's a very powerful product. I know - I used to develop
the Mac client (a few years ago).

Based on your mix of platforms and your requirements, I think it's
worth a look.

Good luck,
Brett

On Jul 25, 2005, at 10:03 AM, Brett Walker wrote:

>> >Not necessary but prefer that the software
>> >1) can save the files in a readable format (i.e not encoded)
>> >2) does not require us to write our own scripts to get it to work
>> >
>> >I am willing to entertain suggestions that do not meet all of the
>> >first 5 but the strategy would need to be exceptional in how it
>> works.
>>
>>
>
> I know I am a bit late to the discussion, but traveling put me behind
> my reading.
>
> There is a product from IBM/Tivoli, believe it or not, that will do
> pretty much what you want. It's called Tivoli Storage Manager (I
> don't have a direct URL handy).

(I too just returned from vacation and am catching up on this list.)

I've use IBM/Tivoli since it used to be called ADSM. It's a very good
solution, though it can take some getting used to. It's designed to
work for very large install bases, so it can scale way up, yet it's
client driven (clients can manage their own restores).

Tivoli was designed using the philosophy of "incremental forever".
You only do a full backup the first time. You can define how many
copies of a file to keep, and various expirations as well. Newer
versions (about when it changed to being called Tivoli) can all do a
Point In Time backup for archiving if you want, like right before a
major system upgrade.

One thing caught my attention in your list of requirements. "Readable
format" Tivoli encodes all of its files in some way, can't remember
the details. Another product in the same league is NetBackup from
Veritas. One of their selling points is that everything is written to
tape with tar, and the listing of what is where is also written as a
plain text file. So if your data center blows up, you can just set up
a plain old computer with a tape drive and find your file.

IMHO, this was always a marketing ploy rather than being practical.
Many tape drives these days can multiplex the data; write data from
multiple clients mixed together on the tape. The reason for this is
that most clients can't stream data as fast as the tape wants, and a
tape that continually has to stop, rewind, find where it stopped, and
start again only to repeat the process is the quickest way to waste
backup time. So going to look for something on one tape is probably
never going to happen.

Also, most sites choose to encrypt their data on the tape these days.
There have been a couple recent stories in the news about offsite
tapes going missing. It's an easy way to compromise a server, let the
owners copy the data off and move it offsite for you.

If you were going to check out these two, you're into the enterprise
class of backup software, and there are others out there. The last of
the big three is Legato.

Steve Cochran

I'm using BackupPC here myself in a heterogenous environment and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. The nice thing is that you can use SMB and rSync to retrieve the data from the clients. In addition, you get a no-frills webinterface to see what's going on. Users can be given access to this webinterface as well, allowing them to directly restore some or all files directly to their machines or download a zip/tgz file containing what they want.

I spent a good deal of time also on looking for a usable rSync implementation on Windows. After lots of junk, I found this to be the best of the bunch: http://www.itefix.no/phpws/index.php?module=linkman&LMN_op=visitLink&LMN_id=2