Enterprise-level backup programs can provide peace of mind that the data on your servers is safe and secure. If your backup software doesn’t give that protected feeling, you might want to invest in a solid insurance policy for your data. I dug up seven products that offer the comprehensive client support and advanced features necessary to enable centralized backup in an enterprise.
The products that I considered for this comparative review needed to offer backup and restoration capabilities on Windows 2000, Windows NT, Novell NetWare 5.1, and Sun Microsystems’ Solaris 8 platforms. The products also needed to be able to perform online backups and restores of SQL Server 7.0’s databases and Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5’s Directory Store, Information Store (IS), and individual mailboxes. As I tested these base capabilities, I also considered performance, media-control features, manageability, and advanced subsets of the required features.
The nature of enterprise backup solutions demands that they offer features such as command-line control, pre-job and post-job scripting, and an array of add-ons. I chose not to dwell on those ubiquitous features. Except where noted, I obtained the performance numbers that Graph 1 and Graph 2 show without modifying the products’ basic installation. As the traditional backup window meets its demise in the 24 x 7 e-world, backup concerns are beginning to shift away from hardware speeds and feeds. Because so much of your data is available online, the ability to perform highly reliable online backups is more vital than ever. Reliability and data integrity reign supreme over screaming backup speeds.
To test these backup products’ features and functions, I configured a scaled-down model of an enterprise environment. At the heart of my backup test system was an ADIC Scalar 100 tape library that contained four IBM 3580 Ultrium Linear Tape-Open (LTO) drives. The backup server—a Dell PowerEdge 4400 with dual 800MHz Intel Xeon processors and 2GB of RAM—connected to the library through two Adaptec Ultra160 SCSI adapters. One adapter connected two LTO drives and the robot (i.e., the tape-library arm that moves tapes from slots to drives) and the second adapter connected the remaining two LTO drives.
To test cross-platform compatibility, I used a Sun Enterprise 3500 server running Solaris 8 and a custom-built system running NetWare. Also, running either Win2K Server or NT Server, I used a mixture of hardware that provided small, medium, and large data files, Exchange Server data, and SQL Server data to back up and restore. To test each product's parallel-streaming abilities, I conducted Windows file-system backups concurrently, then performed the database backup tests individually. I conducted the SQL Server database-restore operations in overwrite mode rather than in a disaster-recovery restore scenario. I used an HP ProCurve 2524 switch to ensure adequate network throughput during backups and restores. For full-duplex 1000Mbps operation, I used optical fiber—by way of a Gigabit-SX port—to connect the backup server to the switch. All other systems attached to 100Base-T ports on the switch and operated in full-duplex mode at 100Mbps.
How They Fared
Each product’s features, characteristics, and price structure determine whether the product is a good fit for your environment. CommVault Systems’ CommVault Galaxy 3.1, VERITAS Software’s VERITAS NetBackup DataCenter 3.4, Legato Systems’ Legato NetWorker 6.0, and Hewlett-Packard’s (HP’s) OpenView OmniBack II 3.5 all boast features that enable them to scale for performance and administration in large environments. Surprisingly, three of the lower-priced products, OmniBack II, Syncsort’s Backup Express 2.1.4, and UltraBac’s UltraBac 6.3 Enterprise Edition, demonstrated impressive nontuned performance numbers, but Computer Associates’ (CA’s) ARCserve 2000 Advanced Edition 7.0 fared best for overall throughput. NetBackup DataCenter and NetWorker provided decent performance out of the box, but—importantly—both products offer an array of tunable parameters with which you can optimize performance. (For a cost comparison that considers several different hardware configurations, see Table 1.)
All the products contain idiosyncrasies in setup, configuration, and operation. However, for overall ease of use and operation, I give my highest recommendation to ARCserve 2000. NetBackup DataCenter and OmniBack II follow close behind. UltraBac is also easy to use, mostly due to a less complex option set. The functionality of all the products’ client-side components was similar, with the exception of OmniBack II’s Exchange Server mailbox-backup feature, which wasn’t well integrated. The mailbox-backup feature is a new addition in both OmniBack II and Backup Express. All the products support online backups and restores of SQL Server 2000, 7.0, and 6.5—except Galaxy, which doesn't support SQL Server 6.5. NetWorker supports SQL Server 6.5 through NetWorker's previous-version SQL Server agent (i.e., Legato NetWorker Module 2.0.1 for Microsoft SQL Server). None of the products automatically recognize and coordinate distributed partitioned views; you must manually coordinate backups across member servers. All the products except UltraBac perform Win2K System State backups on both local and remote computers. UltraBac performs System State backups on only the local computers.