There would be lots of benefits gained by backing up remotely like
that.  You could have scripts written to on the half hour determine
which files have been modified and ship them to the backup machine.

Is the performance for FTP much faster then DSCOPY, or did you just not
buy the NS3000iX license?

The only gotcha that I could see is that if all the nodes/houses are
hardwired using ethernet would be fears of lightning or electrical
problems in one house cause problems for the other boxes.  If the LAN is
implemented using fiber pairs and media convertors no problem....

Wirt Atmar wrote:
>
> I wrote just a little while ago:
>
> > That has been our experience, too. HP3000 to PC (or vice versa) transfers
> are
> >  at least 10 times faster than Reflection's, and HP3000 to HP3000 transfers
> >  are even quicker yet (perhaps 20 times), even when discounting that only
> one
> >  transfer has to be made rather than two (3000 to PC and then PC to the
> > second
> >  3000).
> >
> >  I'm quite impressed with the quality of the implementation of FTP on the
> >  HP3000.
>
> Let me elaborate on that last statement a bit, if you don't mind. I have been
> impressed enough with HP3000-to-HP3000 FTP transfers that we're in the
> process of buying another 918 simply to use it as a backup device. Rather
> than transfer our HP3000 files to tape as we have in the past (we're
> currently using DDS-2 devices and they've seemed reliable enough), I now
> believe that we're going to change our backup procedures and primarily
> transfer our HP3000 files to a second HP3000, using a CI-script and FTP.
>
> For those of you that have been here, you know that AICS Las Cruces is really
> just an eclectic collection of three houses and one garage, taking up half a
> block, all LAN'ed together to form a "Network Neighborhood". There are (or
> will be) HP3000's in all of the buildings. Because the houses are relatively
> independent buildings, and because they are all fully alarmed, 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 (i.e., a fire, which is by far and away the
> most likely threat, would in all likelihood be confined to just one building,
> even if it were catastrophic). Nonetheless, weekly backups to tape will still
> be taken off-site.
>
> In my few trials with this procedure so far, I'm quite impressed with the
> possibilities. Backups are accomplished, even over a 10Mbps LAN, at about the
> same speed as they are to DDS tape when hardware compression is used, but
> more importantly, the procedure seems to be significantly more flexible.
> Specific groups and accounts can be transferred/backupped only when
> necessary, in a delta fashion, rather than constantly perform either nightly
> full or partial backups, and yet have the information on the backup act as if
> it were a fully loaded, full backup, loaded and ready for instant query.
> Because of the inherent nature of the backup device -- which is now a second
> computer, synchronized to the first -- restoration or switchover should be
> nearly instantaneous.
>
> Moreover, the "backup" HP3000 doesn't need to be large to make this work. In
> fact, it needs only the very smallest CPU and user license. All it really
> needs to have is sufficient disc space to backup all of the other HP3000s.
>
> Wirt Atmar