In article <[log in to unmask]>,
aziggy  <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I know this is way off the topic, so I apologies.
>
>I am having trouble with backups on a Novell network.  Currently we are using
>Cheyenne Arcserve.  Are backups run really slow and most of the time fail.
Dose
>anyone know of another backup utility that can be used on a Novel Network.

I have had excellent service from Seagate Backup (formerly Arcada Backup)
for Netware.

Runs on the NW server, backups up the server plus any DOS, Win (usual
flavors), OS/2, Sun Solaris boxes, etc. to the DAT on the NW server.

They have a version for a single server with a 25 user license or less,
plus a version that handles an unlimited number.  The Unix workstation
support is only in the unlimited version.

Oh, it can also back up other NW servers.

Runs full speed for the C1533A DDS-2 drive we have.

To get it to run full speed, we had to put decent 10Mb Ethernet cards in
the PC's.  Went from old 3C501-era ISA NICs to Etherlink III PCI cards.
Backup speed went way up in our Pentium-133's.

Turns out in our case that the poorly designed IPX/SPX protocol that was
used to send the data to the NW server from the client workstations missed
every packet acknowlegement and re-sent every single packet.  Throughput
was horrid.  Decent network cards saved the day.

Oh, the NW server is an old Pentium-75, and the compression is performed
by the DDS-2 drive in hardware in our case.  Might make a difference if
you were using software compression. (Or perhaps you are doing both... and
wasting server cycles).  Also, check to see if you have a decent
bus-mastering SCSI controller running the tape drive in the NW server.
The character-at-a-time programmed I/O of many of the old ISA SCSI
controllers eats cycles also.

Have you checked the CPU utilization on the NW server during the backup to
see if it is the culprit instead of the network or the speed of the
clients?

I'll check at the office tomorrow and see how fast the backup averages in
MB/min and post it to the list.

Your results may vary (TM).


--
Rick Gilligan
Senior Software Specialist
Computer And Software Enterprises, Inc.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]