Wirt has a good practical solution:

> ... I feel that they are essentially safe enough so that day-to-
> day backups can be transferred from one machine to another
> without placing the backup at the same risk level as the primary

> .... Backups are accomplished, even over a 10Mbps LAN, at
> about the same speed as they are to DDS tape

If and when we get fiberchannel discs on the 3000, there will
yet another even much faster method:  Use multiple volume
sets on one 3000;  and put that volume set in another box up
to 10km away (for single mode fiber), and (maybe) up to about
3km away (for good multi-mode fiber).   Then just do a disc-to-
disc backup on the 100 MB/sec fiberchannel;  about two orders
of magnitude faster (at least in theory) than 10 Mb LAN.     :-)

That is fast enough that even large databases can be copied
quickly.  For sites that are "almost but not quite" true 7 x 24
(and therefore might be able to avoid running one of the online
backup products or Shareplex / NetBase), this is...  er....  will
be the fastest backup method I know of.

In addition, with the above scenario if you use roll-forward
IMAGE logging and put the IMAGE log files on the user volume
in the remote disc farm, you will have a completely up-to-the-
second off-site copy of all database transactions....

....  of course fiberchannel for the 3000 appears to be a ways
off yet....    <sigh>

Ken Sletten