System and Enterprise-Wide Backup Software

All too often, we PC-users lull ourselves into a false sense of security. We risk our systems and data by ignoring the basic concepts of backup and fault tolerance. Typically, we finally come to grips with these issues only after a serious, and many times unrecoverable, system crash. For some of us, a serious crash is just an aggravation. For many others, a crash is a disaster that loses critical business information forever. With this perspective in mind, let's examine software options for system and network backups in the Windows NT environment.

I worked closely with six backup applications: ARCserve 2.01 from Cheyenne Software, Backup Exec 6.1 from Seagate Software (formerly, Arcada Backup Exec), Seagate Storage Manager and Backup Director (formerly, Palindrome Storage Manager and Backup Director), UltraBac 2.3 from Barratt Edwards International, NetWorker from Legato, and SQLStor from SQL Business Systems. After working with these packages for a while, some basic similarities became obvious: All these applications provide backup services, restore services, administration services, and tape preparation and management services (such as retention, erase, and display tape directories), and interface with several SCSI-based tape backup units, as you can see in the sidebar, "Backup Hardware Options," page 54. Cheyenne's ARCserve, Seagate Software's Storage Manager and Backup Director, and Legato's NetWorker share a similar look and feel. Barratt Edwards' UltraBac and Seagate Software's Backup Exec also share several attributes.

SQLStor is a unique backup package designed to automatically back up an SQL database. Manufacturers of the other backup applications are just now developing SQL agents, whereas SQLStor is already a full-blown application. Because SQLStor is not a general-purpose backup package, Windows NT Magazine staff did not consider it during the evaluation process to determine the editor's choices.

ArcServe 2.01
The Windows NT implementation of ARCserve is similar to its previous implementations for the DOS and Novell NetWare environments. Installation is straightforward, with the logon name and password configured as a logon service. This approach lets ARCserver perform unattended backups.

Screen 1 is a view of the quick-access box that greets you when you initiate ARCserve. Although my first reaction to this interface was far from favorable, it lets you use all aspects of ARCserve from this menu. For example, opening Device Management produces the mapping of the SCSI devices.

If you open the Backup window, you'll see a simple source/destination box that has a Windows 95 appearance. The drives you check are copied to the specific devices you choose in the destination window. This process usually works well on a local machine, but to back up across a network, I had to enter a name and password that ARCserve stored for subsequent use. As with all the other backup applications, you can run the ARCserve backup immediately or schedule it for another time when the system is otherwise inactive.

The Database window lists your tape resources (tapes that contain backup data). In this window, you can click on a tape entry and expand the display to show sessions on that tape. You can then go to the file option to expand the session into files and directories.

In the Restore mode, you can search for individual files, and ARCserve finds them efficiently and quickly. With the file information, you see the tape where the file is stored and the file's attributes. To finish the restore, you select the destination drive. This ability to quickly find and restore a file is mandatory for any enterprise-scale environment.

Cheyenne has fixed many nasty blue-screen crashes in ARCserve that occurred in release 1. Version 2.01 offers optional database agents such as SQL, Oracle, and Service Advertising Protocol (SAP) agents. With the rapid rate of deployment of large SQL and Oracle servers, an application's ability to handle such databases is obligatory.

ARCserve is less suited for enterprisewide use than either Storage Manager or NetWorker. To better serve the enterprise environment, ARCserve needs more detailed file management, easier control for networkwide viewing, and a simpler interface. Even so, ARCserve has a broad installed base on several platforms and is an ideal application for heterogeneous networks.

Versions of ARCserver are available for Intel, MIPS, and Alpha platforms. For this reason, ARCserve deserves your very serious consideration. If more automated features and drive grooming become available, ARCserve can be in real contention for editor's choice for enterprise-scale networks.

ARCserve 2.01 is an excellent product, and I was impressed with its abilities and general layout. ARCserver is more powerful than Backup Exec, but less full-featured than Storage Manager, Backup Director, and NetWorker. On the other hand, ARCserve has earned BackOffice Certification from Microsoft. All in all, ARCserve is a quality application that deserves serious consideration in any environment.

ENTERPRISE-SCALE NETWORKS

Storage Manager and Backup Director 4.0
Seagate Software's (formerly, Palindrome's) Storage Manager and Backup Director are separate but similar backup applications. The installation procedure for both packages is a two-stage process: First, you prepare the installation, and then you install the software. The interesting aspect of this approach is that you have the option to use this procedure to restore a crash.

During the installation, Storage Manager and Backup Director compile a device list and a protected resource list. The devices are the backup devices you have available; these products have no drivers to install. The protected resource list shows local or remote drives that you want to protect in case of a system failure. The protected resource list is the key to file and drive management: The products provide histories of the resources that have undergone backup, archiving, and migration. After you configure the device list and the resource list, backups become automatic. The backup regimen in Backup Director defaults to the standard grandfather/father/son routine. Storage Manager, however, defaults to the confusing (at least to me) Tower of Hanoi routine.

Once installed, Storage Manager and Backup Director boot into their control panel, which you see in screen 2. From this point, much of what you want to do is automatic or under the control of cue cards. Both packages are automated to the utmost and designed for ease of use and control. As with ARCserve, the GUI view can be daunting, but most aspects of the process appear as folders and buttons. Additional program features are available through ribbon bars.

Managers control all functions in Storage Manager and Backup Director. For example, in the Configuration Manager, you add users to the system. These are users who can control a server from a remote enterprise location.

In the advanced settings, you set concurrent operations (three is the maximum) and can allow as many as eight backups to different devices. As you might expect, simultaneous backups are very processor-intensive. When I used two autochangers at once, the performance monitor on my test dual-processor system showed both CPUs running close to 100%. Backups involving the Digital Linear Tape (DLT) units were not as CPU-intensive (60% to 70%). (Please see "Backup Hardware Options," on page 54, for more information about autochangers and DLT units.)

Storage and Backup Director excel in file management. The embedded File Manager utility shows all aspects of the files and their histories and includes a file finder that searches the drives and databases. The File Manager is a powerful part of both Storage Manager and Backup Director.

Certain terms in Storage Manager and Backup Director are unusual. For example, in many other backup applications, you "catalog" a tape. However, in Storage Manager and Backup Director, you "journal" a tape using the Media Manager. The Media Manager lets you examine mounted tapes and format them. Restore occurs through either File Manager or Resource Manager. In the former, you can restore individual files and in the latter, whole drives.

Storage Manager and Backup Director let you select days, times, and backup types. From that point, the process is automatic (except, of course, for the manual loading of tapes if no autochanger is present). If a system crashes, you can do a minimal install of NT and then reinstall Storage Manager and Backup Director. You get the choice of installation or recover. If you chose recover, the application will recover damaged resources automatically. This capability may seem superfluous, but this kind of recovery is a godsend on an enterprise scale.

The backup regimen (grandfather/father/son vs. Tower of Hanoi) is one notable difference between Storage Manager and Backup Director. Another difference is that Storage Manager offers hierarchical storage management. This feature lets you use customizable rules to archive files and migrate them to tape in specific time frames. The ability to add customized rules makes Storage Manager the most powerful of all the backup solutions reviewed here.

Both Storage Manager and Backup Director are feature-rich applications. For enterprise-scale environments, you can enhance both applications by adding Seagate's Visual Storage Administrator (VISTA) software. VISTA gives you central control of all Storage Manager and Backup Director operations, on the network.