The questions in here are designed to help you find out as much as possible about a backup software product. The question are not perfect, and any opinions that may be implied by the wording of the questions is unintentional. Please use this only as an information gathering tool, and form your own opinions!
It is my hope to have a "live" version of this RFI available on http://www.backupcentral.com
as soon as possible.
| 1. | What is the name of this product? |
| 2. | Some backup products consist of a base product, then several "add-ons" for which the customer must pay extra. Please list all add-ons that this product has, and what additional benefits they provide. |
| 3. | Please list any third-party products that are required to use the add-ons above (E.g. St. Bernard). |
| 4. | For these questions, a "raw device" is defined as a disk, a slice of a disk, or a virtual disk composed of several disks (e.g. a RAID device). THIS DISK DOES NOT CONTAIN A FILE SYSTEM. It does contain some other type of structured data, though. For example it may be a raw partition containing Oracle or Sybase data. If I shutdown Oracle or whatever is writing to this raw partition, can this product back up that raw device? |
| 5. | One problem with raw devices is that backup products see them as one big file, instead of thousands of blocks of data. Any backup of a raw device is therefore typically a full backup. However, a backup product could keep track of each block of data on the raw device, and back up only those blocks that have changed. This would allow a true incremental backup of this device. Can this product perform an incremental backup (as defined here) of a raw device (as defined above)? |
| 6. | If so, does it keep track of block contents by generating a [C] checksum for each block, do a [B] block comparison to an existing full backup, or [A] analyze the structured data on the raw device in some way (e.g. understand how Oracle structures data on a raw device)? |
| 7. | If a raw device (as defined above) is bigger than a tape, can this product spread its backup over more than one tape? |
| 8. | ***LARGE SYSTEMS/FILES*** Some operating systems are now supporting large file systems (>1TB) and large files (>4GB). If the operation system supports large files (>4GB), does this product support backing them up? |
| 9. | If the operating system supports large file systems (>1TB) does this product support backing them up? |
| 10. | If a file system is bigger than a tape, can this product spread its backup over more than one tape? |
| 11. | If a FILE is bigger than a tape, can this product spread its backup over more than one tape? |
| 12. | *** MANY SYSTEMS TO ONE DEVICE*** Streaming tape drives work well only if you provide them with a constant stream of data equivalent to their maximum transfer rate. In order to do this, it is often necessary to create multiple sources (or "threads") of data to the same drive simultaneously to keep it streaming. This is usually done by backing up several disks or systems to the same device simultaneously. Can this system backup several systems at once, and send them to the same tape drive simultaneously? |
| 13. | If the answer to the previous question was yes, each source of data getting backed up to this device would be called a thread. What is the greatest number of threads that can be sent to the same device at once [integer], or is this number [U] unlimited ? |
| 14. | What is the maximum number of threads that can run at once per backup server [integer], or is this number [U] unlimited ? |
| 15. | What is the maximum number of clients that can be backed up at once per backup server [integer], or is this number [U] unlimited ? |
| 16. | What is the maximum number of tape drives that can be used simultaneously [integer], or is this number [U] unlimited ? |
| 17. | How does it determine how many "threads" to send to the device? Is it [D] dynamically determined based on how well a given device is streaming compared to its maximum throughput? Is it a [G] global value set by the administrator (i.e. all devices get three threads each)? Or is the administrator able to determine the maximum number of threads for each device [I] individually (i.e. this device gets three threads, this one gets four, etc.)? |
| 18. | For this RFI, this feature (of sending multiple threads to a device) will be called concurrency. This is either done on the [F] file level or [R] record level. File level concurrency does not split up the file. These products interleave [F] files from different hosts (or different parts of the same host) together. Other products do this by splitting up the file into multiple blocks or [R] records, which are sent to the tape drive asynchronously. If this product supports concurrency, is it [F] file-level or [R] record-level concurrency, or [B] both at the option of the administrator? |
| 19. | If done on the record level, will all the pieces of a given file normally go to the same tape [Y] (unless EOT is reached), or are they automatically spread across multiple tapes [N]? |
| 20. | If so, is the number of tapes that this file will be split across configurable by the administrator? |
| 21. | ***ONE SYSTEM TO MANY DEVICES*** (See Note 1 at the end of the RFI.) Can an administrator using this product take a big host, split it up into smaller subsets and back it up to multiple tape drives simultaneously (assuming the administrator schedules it to do so)? |
| 22. | Can this product do the above without requiring an administrator to create the logical subsets? In other words, can the administrator simply tell this software "backup apollo?" The product would then automatically start multiple simultaneous threads on apollo during the backup, each of which would back up a subset of the system, such as a file system. The product would then automatically send these threads to multiple tape drives simultaneously. Can this product automatically start multiple simultaneous threads per client? |
| 23. | If this product has this capability, does it have logic in place to NOT start more than one thread per file system at a time? |
| 24. | If so, this could cause a limitation with very large file systems. However, if this file system is sitting on a virtual partition consisting of several physical disks striped together, it could easily support more than one thread at a time. Does this product notice when a file system is residing on more than one disk, and then automatically generate more than one thread for that file system? |
| 25. | Another way to solve the problem above would be to allow the administrator to say that a given file system can support X number of threads. Does this product allow the administrator to specify this value on a file system level? |
| 26. | If this product can automatically start multiple simultaneous threads per client, is the number of threads and drives being used [D] dynamic or [S] static? (E.g. If the product is splitting a large host's backup over 5 drives, and another drive becomes available, it will start using that drive if drive allocation is dynamic. If drive allocation is static, it will continue using 5.) Is drive allocation [D] dynamic or [S] static? |
| 27. | Another difficult problem to solve is that of a very large raw device (as defined above in the raw device section) which must be backed up in a short amount of time. If this product is able to back up raw partitions, can it also start multiple simultaneous threads per raw device (This would be independent of a program like Backup Server or Oracle's EBU. An example of how this might be used is using a script to shut down the Oracle instance, and then using this feature to back up its raw devices in parallel as fast as possible to multiple tape drives. If this product could do this, the administrator could back up relatively large Oracle databases without having to buy an EBU interface, as long as they could afford a little down time.) Can this product do this? |
| 28. | Suppose there was a very large file. Can this product start multiple simultaneous threads for this file, sending these threads to multiple tape drives SIMULTANEOUSLY? |
| 29. | What is the maximum number of threads that each client can generate at once? |
| 30. | ***REDUCING NETWORK TRAFFIC*** Does this product allow the administrator to specify how many Mb/s they want to send out on the network? |
| 31. | If the answer to the above is yes, can this value be changed based on different days, or times of the day? |
| 32. | If this product can change its use of the network, can it do so based on observed network traffic [V] volume, [T] throughput, or [L] latency [V,:T,:L] (Multiple possible answers. Answer with all that apply.)? |
| 33. | This question is intended to determine what type(s) of backup architectures this product supports. (See note 2 at the end of the RFI that defines four architecture types.) Which architecture(s) does this product support: [S] Standalone, [2] two-tier, [3] three-tier or [W] web administration (Multiple possible answers. Answer with all that apply.)? |
| 34. | Assume that this product supports device servers (as defined by Note 2). Will this product allow the administrator to configure the backup definitions in such a way that apollo's backup should normally go to a certain device server? |
| 35. | Can this product separate backups per subnet? (I.e. If the administrator desires, systems on a subnet would normally backup to tape drives on that subnet.) |
| 36. | Does this product have an algorithm that tries to determine the closest possible server to send a given client's backups to (E.g. It might try to find a device server on the same subnet first.) ? |
| 37. | Some tape libraries have external SCSI connectors for each device (e.g. ATL/Odetics). Therefore each tape drive could conceivably be connected to different systems. Does this product allow putting each of these devices on separate hosts, and still controlling this as one library? |
| 38. | If so, does this library still cost the same in licensing? |
| 39. | Does this product support compressing the files on the client before sending them to a remote tape drive, WITHOUT MODIFYING THE ORIGINAL FILES? (It has been suggested that one could run the compress command on the entire file system prior to backing it up. That is not what I mean when I say software compression.) Does this product support software compression? |
| 40. | If this product supports software compression, is this compression done by passing the data through a stream (or pipe) [S], or is each file compressed to a temporary location, such as /tmp, and then sent to the tape drive [T] Some products do not pass the data through a compressing stream, and do not use a temporary disk location, but will still compress each file in [M] memory as it is on its way to the backup device (assuming memory is big enough to hold the file). Answer with the appropriate letter. Does this product use [S] stream compression, a [T] temporary file location, or [M] memory based compression? |
| 41. | If this compresses files to a temporary location, what happens if that temporary location's file system fills up? Does this product have a work around for that? |
| 42. | ***STANDARD OR UNIQUE BACKUP FORMAT*** For this RFI, "unique backup format" is defined as a format that cannot be read with native utilities, such as dump/restore, ufsdump/ufsrestore, Microsoft Backup, tar or cpio. Does this product use a standard backup format [Y], or a unique backup format [N]? |
| 43. | If so, which does it use: [C] cpio, [T] tar, [D] dump, [M] Microsoft? |
| 44. | If not, can a user choose not to use this unique format, and use a standard instead (e.g. dump, tar, cpio)? |
| 45. | If it uses (or allows the use of) a standard format, and one backs up multiple hosts to the same device simultaneously, is the tape still readable by the native utility? |
| 46. | If this product allows using standard utilities, has it overcome their limitations (e.g. 256 character path name in tar, no special files in tar and cpio, file systems changing underneath dump)? |
| 47. | Can this product write SIDF (System Independent Data Format) compliant tapes ? |
| 48. | Can this product read tapes written in SIDF? |
| 49. | Does this product have any plans to [W] write or read [R] the SIDF (Multiple possible answers.)? |
| 50. | ***NETWORK DISK DRIVES*** Can this product backup a file system mounted via NFS? |
| 51. | If so, can it back up or skip selected NFS partitions [Y], or must you exclude or backup all NFS partitions [N]? |
| 52. | Can this product back up drives on a NetWare server that are really network mounted from another NetWare server (i.e. data is passed NW server -> NW server -> BU system)? |
| 53. | Once again, can it backup or skip selective NetWare network file systems [Y], or must one exclude/include all of them [N]? |
| 54. | Can this product back up network drives that have been mounted via the SMB (A.K.A. CIFS) protocol (e.g. NT network drives mounted onto a UNIX server using SAMBA, an NT drive network mounted to another NT server, or an OS/2 network mounted drive)? |
| 55. | Once again, can it back them up selectively [Y], or must an administrator exclude/include all of them [N]? |
| 56. | Let's say that I am already using this product to do a full backup of a particular system every week. Assume I want to save one of these full backups every month, and keep its data in the online catalog for 5 years, while allowing the other three full backups to expire. Can one of the regular weekly full backups be saved automatically for this period of time [Y], or must I run a separate backup that will be kept for a long period of time [N] (In other words, is the retention period a value that can change per backup definition [Y], or is it a global value that always stays the same [N]? |
| 57. | If this product does not perform regularly occurring full backups, can it create a full backup of a system at any point in time by copying the data from the appropriate tapes? |
| 58. | ***STORAGE MANAGEMENT*** For this question, archiving is defined as saving a group of files together using a definition that can be searched on years later. Years from now, I will not know the name of the system that contained the files for a given project, but hopefully I will know the project name from which they came. So, can I create a backup definition that contains all the data for a given project, back up that data using that definition, then retrieve that data years from now using that project name? |
| 59. | Is archive data stored on separate tapes from regular backups? |
| 60. | HSM (Hierarchical Storage Management) is defined as a process that proactively monitors my file systems based on parameters that I have set, such as access time. It then proactively moves them off to less expensive media, such as tape, and leaves behind 'ghost' files that, if accessed, cause the files to be restored by the HSM system. A true HSM would cause them to be restored automatically. Does this product have an HSM module? |
| 61. | Can this product's HSM module work with [A] any type of file system that the client supports, or does it require a [S] special type of file system, such as Veritas' vxfs? |
| 62. | Are files that are archived by the HSM system put on tape multiple times before they are removed from disk? |
| 63. | Is an HSM-migrated file automatically restored if it is accessed? |
| 64. | Is the HSM user given a choice of restoring the file? In other words, if a user looks at a file, does the user have a choice to restore it [Y], or will it automatically be restored [N]? |
| 65. | Is HSM data stored on special tapes that only store HSM data [Y], or are they stored on the same tapes as normal backup data [N]? |
| 66. | All products that read a Unix file through the file system will change its atime. If this product backs up through the file system, does it reset the atime of a file after it backs it up? |
| 67. | One of the downsides of resetting atime is that it will automatically change ctime. Some systems, such as a firewall, might value ctime more than atime. If this product supports resetting atime, can the administrator choose NOT to reset it? |
| 68. | If yes, is this option on the backup definition level [B], or is it a global value resulting in all atime's being reset or not [G]? |
| 69. | A "snapshot" is a picture of a system in one instant of time. To be useful, a snapshot takes only a few seconds to make, and can then be backed up by a backup product. It allows the product to take many hours to back up a system, but creates a backup that looks as if it was done all at the same instant. (e.g. Snapshot from Network Appliance, or Veritas' vxfs) Does this product support using any snapshot software products to automatically get consistent backups of large file systems? |
| 70. | If the answer to the above question is yes, please list the snapshot products that this product can automatically use between this and the next question. |
| 71. | If a backup fails, can this product restart from that point [Y], or must it go back to the beginning [N]? |
| 72. | Can this product append to tapes that have already been used? |
| 73. | Can this product automatically reuse tapes that have expired? |
| 74. | ***RUNNING USER SCRIPTS*** Can this product run a shell script or batch program automatically before and after a backup? |
| 75. | When that shell script fails, does that backup automatically stop [S], continue on anyway [C], or are its reactions in this scenario configurable by the administrator [A]? |
| 76. | ***ADMINISTRATION*** Regarding scheduling of full backups, backup products can be divided into three categories. The first would be the traditional [S], "Scheduled Full Backups." The administrator defines what days of the month or week that each full backup runs. The second would be [A] "Automatic Full Backups." The administrator defines that a full backup should occur every N days, and the product automatically spreads all full backups out over that "rotation period." The third would be [N] "no full backups." The product essentially does one full backup, and then all backups from that point on are incremental backups. Which category best fits this product, [S] Scheduled full backups, [A] automatically scheduled full backups, or [N] no full backups? |
| 77. | Does this product support multiple levels of incremental backups (e.g. 1-9)? |
| 78. | Can tapes be automatically created for off-site storage? |
| 79. | If the above is true, is it a copy of the data from one tape to another [Y], or a second backup [N]? |
| 80. | Do the off-site tapes have a unique name in the backup catalog? |
| 81. | Assume that a backup tape is made by this product, and this product is told to keep track of its data in the backup catalog for some period of time. Is this tape protected from being overwritten by this product for that period of time [Y], or is there some way to accidentally overwrite a backup tape with this product [N] (Obviously, an administrator using a native backup utility could manually overwrite the tape, but this question is making sure that this products tapes are safe from itself.) |
| 82. | Is there some way to tell this product that a set of tapes are off-site? |
| 83. | If the answer to the previous question is yes, what happens during a restore? If the version of a file being asked for resides on two tapes, one of which is off-site, will this product ask for the on-site tape first? |
| 84. | Another method of providing off-site copies is "saveset cloning." A given night's backups may span over many tapes, but they might fit onto one tape if combined. Saveset cloning would mean that these several tapes can be automatically copied onto one tape (or however many it takes) that can then be sent off-site. This would be done automatically by the software, as defined by the administrator. Does this product support "saveset cloning"? |
| 85. | Another common problem with backups is that over time a number of tapes may contain small amounts of useful data. They cannot be re-used because part of the tape has not expired, and may not expire for a long time. However, they contain so little unexpired data that if you put many of them together they could fit on one tape. What some products allow you to do is to automatically copy all the un-expired files from a number of tapes to one or more consolidated tapes, and automatically free up, or "reclaim" the tapes from which the files came. Does this product support "reclaiming" several tapes by automatically copying their unexpired data onto a smaller set of tapes and expiring them? |
| 86. | Some customers have also expressed an interest in "cycling" data that is stored long term. This might mean moving from an older type of media to a newer type that is faster and has more capacity. Or this could simply be moving data from one tape to another to ensure that the media is in good condition. Does this product have anything that could be used to accomplish such a task? |
| 87. | Can this product be told to consolidate a given host's backup? This is slightly different than saveset cloning or media reclamation. The purpose of this is to create one tape, or a small set of tapes, that would contain all the files for a certain system. Can this product take all files for a given system, and create a single tape, or set of tapes, that can be used to restore that system? |
| 88. | Assume that this product supports device servers (As defined in Note 2.), and apollo is backing up to elvis's tape drive. What happens if elvis's drive/library fails tonight? Can this product automatically reroute the backup from that failed system to another device server? |
| 89. | If so, how can an administrator determine which system's tape drive it will reroute that backup to? Does the software [A] automatically pick one based on some algorithm that determines the closest drive by looking at subnet information? Does it allow the administrator to pre-define an alternate drive [M] manually? Or in the case of a failed drive, will the backup simply go to the next [N] available tape drive? |
| 90. | When a product can reroute backups around a failed device, this is called fail-over protection. Can the administrator designate more than one level of fail-over? |
| 91. | Assume that this product has an installation with multiple master backup servers. Does this product have a web-based management system that could manage these servers remotely without having to login to them (i.e. without "telnet" or "rlogin" or logging in from the system console)? |
| 92. | If the answer to the above question is yes, what features among the following list does this web-based administrator support: [S] Scheduling, [P] policy enforcement, [F] additional level of fail-over, [D] automated software distribution (Select all that apply. Multiple possible answers.)? |
| 93. | Does this product allow the administrator to specify aliases for a given client? |
| 94. | If the answer to the previous question is yes, how many aliases may be specified for each client? |
| 95. | If an administrator wants to refer to a client by its fully qualified DNS name, can this product do so? |
| 96. | Will this product allow NIS, DNS, or WINS (or some other hostname to address translation program) to resolve the hostname into an IP/IPX address [Y], or does it need to have a host's IP/IPX address in its database [N]? |
| 97. | (See Note 3 at the end of the RFI for a definition of the difference between file name expansion and regular expression syntax.) Does this product include files based on [R] regular expression syntax, [F] file-name expansion syntax, by [G] selecting them in a GUI, or [N] none of the above? |
| 98. | Can this product include files by some other means ([D] date, [F] 'find' results, [M] modes, [O] ownership)? |
| 99. | Can this product exclude files based on regular expression syntax, [F] file-name expansion syntax, by [G] selecting them in a GUI, or [N] none of the above? |
| 100. | If not, can you exclude files by some other means? |
| 101. | Can this product exclude special TYPES of files (e.g. core files, tmp files, etc.)? |
| 102. | Does this product allow internal customers (as in a group of people with machines that are being backed up with this product) to define their own backup definitions (i.e decentralized control)? |
| 103. | Does this product allow internal customers to schedule their own backups (i.e decentralized scheduling)? |
| 104. | Does this product have a default backup schedule that can be applied to new backup definitions? |
| 105. | Can this product schedule its backups by [D] day (E.g. every Monday), day of the [M} month (E.g. the third day of the month) , by [W] week (E.g. Every Sixth week) and [C] calendar date (E.g. July 23, 1997) (Multiple possible answers)? |
| 106. | If this product supports remote tape drives, and it is copying data from /dev/rmt/2 of apollo to /dev/rmt/3 on apollo, does the data traffic remain local to apollo? |
| 107. | Does this product use the UNIX/NT/Novell login and password, or an additional password to use the administrator GUI or commands (e.g. If this product asks for a second password when someone logs into this product, then answer to this question is NO.)? |
| 108. | Once installed, does this product require a person to have root (or NT administrator) privileges to administer backups? |
| 109. | Can this product give the administrator a summary report for last night's backups [Y] or must the administrator scan several log files [N]? |
| 110. | Does this product have a GUI that will run native on Win95 [9], Windows 3.1 [3], Windows NT [N]? |
| 111. | Does this product have a Motif [M] interface, Openlook [O] interface or both? |
| 112. | Does this product have a curses (i.e. vt100 terminal menu) interface? |
| 113. | Does this product have an HTML interface? |
| 114. | Do all the above interfaces work essentially the same? |
| 115. | Approximately what percentage of commands that are in this product's GUI can also be done on the command line [0-100] |
| 116. | Approximately what percentage of commands that this product requires MUST be done on the command line (e.g. Some products do most of their work in a GUI, but require cron jobs to actually start the backup. |
| 117. | Are the backups initiated by an internal scheduler of this product [I], initiated by cron (or NT & NetWare's equivalent) [C] or [T] third party, such as Norton Scheduler? |
| 118. | If initiated by cron, are these cron entries automatically added by the software [Y], or manually added by the administrator [N]? |
| 119. | If initiated by cron, are the cron entries only on the server [S], or are they also on the clients [N] |
| 120. | Is help is available on-line? |
| 121. | Is the online help in man-page [M] style, hypertext [H], Postscript [P], Adobe PDF [A], simple text [T], or html [W] (multiple possible answers)? |
| 122. | Can this product send messages about backups via email? |
| 123. | Does it allow defining different email addresses for different types of messages? |
| 124. | Can this product generate an SNMP trap? |
| 125. | If a modem was connected to the backup server; can this product send an Alpha page? |
| 126. | Does this product support backing up a Windows client by an automatic connection which "shares" the client's drive to the backup server (via the SMB/CIFS protocol)? |
| 127. | If the answer to the above question is yes, can it do this without needing the administrator password on that client? |
| 128. | Does this product support backing up a Windows client by installing software on the client, communicating and transferring data via that software, and NOT requiring the client to "share" (in Microsoft's definition of that word) the client's drive with the backup server? |
| 129. | Does this product require software to be installed on every client? |
| 130. | If this product requires client side software, will all ports of client software work with all ports of server software (e.g. an HP-UX client will backup to an NT server, a Solaris server, or a NetWare server.)? |
| 131. | If this product requires client side software, and the server software is upgraded, will newer versions of the server software work with older versions of the client software? |
| 132. | Assuming that the backup server can issue an rsh command to a new client, can the new client's software be installed automatically (e.g. the administrator only has to hit a button or run a script that says, "Which client do you want to install?")? |
| 133. | If the above is not true, is the following true? The administrator could ftp or rcp a tar file, which when un-tarred, would contain an install script. Once this install script is run, the client software will be automatically installed and started. This install script would automatically perform the steps necessary to ensure that the software will be started when the system reboots. Is this level of automation available? |
| 134. | Once a client is installed and (if necessary) a daemon is running, can it be upgraded automatically by this product (E.g. Several clients automatically upgraded from a central point)? |
| 135. | Does this product support installing software via the SVR4 package format on operating systems that support that format? |
| 136. | Does this product support defining preferences by backup definition [Y], or all preferences global [N]? |
| 137. | Can I control all backups from one central server if I use device servers? |
| 138. | What is the biggest block size that this product supports (in KB)? |
| 139. | Can this product's block size be changed for performance? |
| 140. | If a new block size is selected for performance, are the tapes made with the old block size still readable? |
| 141. | Does this product support using different block sizes for different types of media? |
| 142. | Does this product use standard device drivers? |
| 143. | Can this product operate without kernel modifications (other than normal patches)? |
| 144. | If this product has problems backing up a file, does it let me know? |
| 145. | Can this product backup the whole system, just by giving its name [Y], or does the administrator need to tell it which file systems to back up [N]? |
| 146. | Can this product gracefully handle Physical End of Tape? |
| 147. | Please list the reports that this product can automatically generate. |
| 148. | Does this product have any way to give an automatic delta report when the backup configuration is changed? |
| 149. | ***SECURITY*** Does this product communicate via sockets [Y] or rsh [N] (i.e Will it work without .rhosts entries)? |
| 150. | Can this product communicate via Kerberos [K] or SSH [S], or neither? |
| 151. | Can this product back up systems that are on the other side of a firewall? (If so, please list which firewalls this product is equipped to work with in the comment field.) |
| 152. | If it does require .rhosts entries, can backups be done as some user other than root? |
| 153. | If this product uses sockets for communication, someone might "spoof" the software, as has been done with sendmail. This might allow them to perform an unauthorized restore. If someone knew the socket calls that this software makes, they could theoretically open up the appropriate port and issue those calls manually. The only way that this could be prevented is some type of authentication. Does this product have such authentication? (Please describe what this product does to prevent this.) |
| 154. | Does this product support encryption on the tape? |
| 155. | If the encryption key ever needs to be changed, are tapes made with the old key still readable? |
| 156. | Does this product support encryption while data is in transit? In other words, the tape itself is not encrypted, but the data is encrypted while in transit across the network? (This could allow secure backups across the Internet or a T1 line.)? |
| 157. | ***RECOVERY*** Are the tapes made by this product platform independent? THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION. In order to be considered platform independent, the tapes made on any operating system that this product supports must be readable by any client on any other operating system that this product supports. (e.g. A Solaris box can read a Novell tape. A tape made on NT is readable on an AIX box. An SGI backup tape is readable on a Novell server.) Are this product's tapes platform independent? |
| 158. | Can a user perform his/her own restores? |
| 159. | If so, can the administrator turn that feature off? |
| 160. | If users can restore their own files, and a user normally logs onto apollo, but his home directory is NFS mounted from elvis, can he restore being logged into apollo [Y], or does he have to log into elvis directly [N]? |
| 161. | If given privileges by the administrator, can one user (such as a helpdesk person) restore another user's files? |
| 162. | Can this product read from multiple tapes simultaneously during a single restore? In other words, a backup of a given file system may be spread over 5 tapes. Can this product read all five tapes simultaneously to restore that file system? |
| 163. | If the answer to the above question is yes, what if the number of tape drives available for restore is different than the number of tape drives available for backup? Assume that the backup wrote to five tapes. Assume also that only three drives are available during the restore. Can this product read three of the five tapes simultaneously, and then ask for the other two when drives become available? |
| 164. | If the answer to the above question is yes, each of the five tapes in the example above would result in a mount request. Can the operator respond to these mount requests in any order? |
| 165. | During a restore, can I restore files to a directory other than the directory from which the files came? |
| 166. | (You might want to read the question more than once before answering it. It's not meant to be tricky, but it is.) I would like to restore /home1/curtis/bin/shells/src to /tmp. The ~/src directory contains several subdirectories. I would like to maintain those subdirectories during the restore. Can I restore /home1/curtis/bin/shells/src to /tmp/src, which will contain all the appropriate subdirectories [Y], or must I restore to /tmp/home1/curtis/bin/shells/src [N]? |
| 167. | Can I restore files to a host different from the host from which the file was backed up? |
| 168. | To restore apollo's files, can I be logged into the master backup server and tell IT to restore apollo's files [Y], or must I be logged into apollo to restore apollo's files [N]? |
| 169. | During a restore, can I rename files one a time, like in cpio? |
| 170. | Does this product support Fast file search on DDS/8mm/DLT, etc.? |
| 171. | Can this product call AIX's mksysb, and place its data on this product's tapes? |
| 172. | SCO has a similar utility. Can this product call that utility and place its data on this product's tapes? |
| 173. | HP has a similar utility. Can this product call that utility and place its data on this product's tapes? |
| 174. | Has this product made any other special arrangements for restoring an entire system? (This is a very hot issue lately. If this product is doing anything in this area other than the AIX's mksysb, and HP & SCO's similar utilities, please explain!) |
| 175. | Does this product report to a user requesting the restore if it failed, or cannot be completed, and why? |
| 176. | If a directory is selected for restore, will this product automatically restore everything underneath it? |
| 177. | Is there a GUI that displays the directory essentially the way it would look in UNIX or NT, and which allows the user to point and click on the file(s) that need restoring? |
| 178. | Does this display above include the attributes of the file in the overall display, without single clicking on a file (e.g. the equivalent of an 'ls -l' or a 'dir')? |
| 179. | Can files also be restored from the command line? |
| 180. | Can files also be restored from the curses interface? |
| 181. | Time for another scenario. I do a full backup of apollo:/home1 on Monday. I do incremental backups all week long. On Wednesday, I delete the file apollo:/home1/curtis/deletefile. I continue doing incremental backups until Friday morning. Friday afternoon the disk containing /home1 dies, and I need to restore /home1. If I select all of /home1 to be restored, will it know that /home1/curtis/deletefile was deleted, and thus not restore it [Y], or will it restore deletefile because at one time it was backed up [N]? (i.e Does this product track deleted files?) |
| 182. | Assume the same scenario as above. It is now Friday, but I want to restore /home1 back to the way it looked on Wednesday night, which would include the file that is not deleted. Can this product do that? |
| 183. | If users can do their own restores, are there any controls that an administrator can place on them to prevent them from interfering with backup operations? |
| 184. | Suppose someone asks for a restore while backups are going on, will the restore take precedence when requesting a volume [R], or will backups get priority [B] |
| 185. | Is this product's default action to restore a file exactly as it appeared, including permissions, modification times, and ownership? |
| 186. | What overwriting options do this product have? |
| 187. | If this product uses block-level parallelism (i.e files are split into multiple blocks which are interleaved onto the tape), how does it read those interleaved blocks during a restore? Does it read the tape continuously, disregarding any un-needed blocks, or does it position-read-position-read? (Position-read-position-read means that you position the tape to a certain block, using 'ioctl fsr' or its equivalent, then read a block of data, then position it to the next block, then read a block of data, and so on.) Another option would be that the product dynamically [D] chooses one of the above methods, depending on which type of drive it is using. (There is only one possible answer to this question, either a continuous read [C], position-read-position [P], or a dynamic choice between the two based on drive type [D].) |
| 188. | ***PROTECTING THE BACKUP CATALOG (Database, Index)*** Where does the backup catalog reside? Is it all in one place on a disk on the backup server [S], spread out on multiple clients [C], or can it be configured either [E] way by the administrator? |
| 189. | Each time this product makes a backup, it adds new data to the backup catalog. Is this new section also placed on the tape with the backup? |
| 190. | Catalog information can be divided into two types of information. For this RFI, the first is called "saveset" information. This is the minimum information required to tell the backup software that apollo:/home1 was backed up on volume VOL001. The second type of information would be "browse" information. This information is required to allow the administrator to browse through a file system in the GUI. Typically, both are needed for normal restores. Both types of information are saved to the backup catalog. Does this product allow the administrator to expire "browse" information, but retain "saveset" information for a longer period of time? |
| 191. | (Here is another question you might want to read more than once.) When a backup runs, does this product ensure that both saveset and browse information are saved to disk? (If this product copies the appropriate section of the catalog to each tape, and then allows the administrator to expire the browse information, part of the catalog is essentially residing on tape, but that is not what this question is looking for. It has been suggested that some backup software products allow part of the catalog to reside on tape -- during the initial save of the catalog information about a given backup. Under this scenario, the "saveset" information would be saved to disk, but the "catalog" information could reside on the tape WITHOUT EVER GOING TO DISK. If that is how this product operates, then the answer to this question is "N.") |
| 192. | How many bytes does the first backup of a given file add to this product's catalog |
| 193. | How many bytes do subsequent backups of that same file add to this product's catalog |
| 194. | If the catalog is on disk, can it span more than one file system? (i.e If my backup catalog is bigger than the biggest file system that my OS supports, can this product spread the catalog out over more than one file system?) |
| 195. | If a client changes its hostname, can this product change its name in the catalog so that its backup history does not get lost? |
| 196. | If yes, and the administrator gives this client a new name, is it an alias [Y], or must the client receive an all new name, and lose all reference to the old name [N]? |
| 197. | Can this product compress or archive parts of the catalog to save space? |
| 198. | Is the backup catalog platform independent? (e.g. If I have been using an NT box for my backup server, but decide I need to go to a UNIX box for more power, can the backup catalog be moved easily? Or if I've been on a Solaris backup server, but all I have available for disaster recovery is a HP, can the catalog be restored to the HP, assuming I have the proper executables?) |
| 199. | If the answer to the above question is NO, are there any utilities that would allow the administrator to move the catalogs from one OS to another? |
| 200. | If the answer to the above question is NO, can a consultant from this product's company perform a custom move of the data between OS's [Y], or is there simply no way to move data between dissimilar OS's [N]? |
| 201. | Assume that this product made a tape, but its saveset and browse information has been completely deleted from the catalog. Can this product read this tape, and see what is on it? |
| 202. | Is there a stand-alone command that could be used to read this product's tapes independent of the product's catalog? If the product is compatible with dump, tar, cpio, or Microsoft Backup, the answer to this question is obviously yes. If it is not compatible with any standard UNIX or NT command, is there a command that comes with the software that would allow an administrator to read the table of contents of the tape? |
| 203. | If the answer to the previous question is yes, could this command be used to restore the data -- once again independent of the catalog. (i.e the catalog is dead, and the customer needs to restore a really important file or file system. Is there a way to do this without restoring the catalog)? |
| 204. | Assuming this product can read the tape above, can it read the saveset and browse information back into the catalog? |
| 205. | Can I read in other backup tapes made with tar, cpio, or dump into this product's catalog (If yes, please list which format this product reads.)? |
| 206. | Can this product import tapes that were made with any other commercial backup products into its catalog (If yes, please list them.)? |
| 207. | When the server is down, or the backup catalog is corrupt, are there any capabilities left [Y], or is the product completely down [N]? |
| 208. | Does this product allow backing up the entire catalog to tape as a separate operation. (Some products allow backing up the catalog in pieces as backups go along. What I'm looking for here is an operation that backs up the entire catalog to a tape or tapes, such as a Sybase 'dump database,' or an Informix 'ontape -s.' )? |
| 209. | If the backup of the catalog is bigger than a tape, can this product spread its backup out over several tapes? |
| 210. | Can this product do an incremental backup of its catalog [Y], or are all catalog backups full backups [N]? |
| 211. | Can the catalog backup be put on a special tape or set of tapes? |
| 212. | Can the catalog backup be restored using standard utilities? |
| 213. | Assume that the backup server is destroyed. How many steps are necessary to recover the catalog to another system? (Please list them in the comment field) |
| 214. | Does the backup catalog have a transaction log (like an RDBMS) that can be used to roll back failed backups? |
| 215. | Does this product use a 3rd party database for its catalog? |
| 216. | Can this catalog be automatically mirrored to another system so that if the backup server dies, I can automatically use the other server for backups and restores? |
| 217. | Does the catalog use a separate, sub-catalog for each system [Y], or is the catalog one big database [N]? |
| 218. | Can an administrator restore just one host's part of the catalog? |
| 219. | ***ROBUSTNESS*** Other than issuing SNMP traps, has this product done any work to integrate with Tivoli? |
| 220. | Can this product interface with the HP Openview monitoring system? |
| 221. | Backup devices and clients sometimes cause the backup processes to hang. Does this product notice that a process is hung, and then kill it automatically? |
| 222. | If yes, what if that process cannot be killed, such as a process hung on a system call to a broken tape drive. Can you restart the backup with another tape [Y], or will this hung process cause the backup to fail at that point [N]? |
| 223. | Can this product keep track of a tape drive that continually gets write errors, and somehow notify the administrator? |
| 224. | Can this product keep track of how many times a tape is used, and stop using it after certain number of uses? |
| 225. | Can this product keep track of how many times a certain tape (the media, not the drive) gets write errors? |
| 226. | Can it notify the administrator to clean a drive manually that is not in the library? |
| 227. | Does it retry open or locked files automatically? |
| 228. | If it does retry open files, is it a set number of times [integer], or configurable by the administrator |
| 229. | If it does retry open files, can it keep trying for a certain amount of time? |
| 230. | A file may be continually changing while it is backed up. Most products try to put something on tape anyway. If this product tries to do so, will a file that was continually changing during backup show up as a restorable file? |
| 231. | If the answer to the above is yes, will it be marked as a suspect file, or some other special note to indicate that it is a suspect file? |
| 232. | Can this product cache backup data to disk prior to sending it to tape? |
| 233. | If the answer to the previous question is yes, can the product be configured NOT to use this cache disk [Y], or is it required for normal operation [N]? |
| 234. | ***AUTOMATION*** If a tape library has a bar code reader, will this product use it? |
| 235. | Does this product keep track of a cleaning tape in a library and automatically clean the library after a certain number of hours of operation? |
| 236. | Can this product clean a drive in a library by specifying to do so from the GUI? |
| 237. | Can this product read the bar code of a magnetically unlabeled tape, and label it according to what the bar code says? |
| 238. | ***COST*** Does this product charge the same for all clients (of the same OS type) [Y], or does it charge more for more powerful clients [N] (e.g. charge more to back up a Sparc 2000 than a 1000.)? |
| 239. | Does the SERVER product on a given OS cost the same regardless of the power of the server [Y], or does the server software license cost more for more powerful backup servers [N]? |
| 240. | If the answer to either of the previous two questions is NO, then if I upgrade the hardware on the server or client, does the product continue to work? (It may notify me that I need to upgrade, and give me a grace period, but it will continue to function for some time?) |
| 241. | Does this product charge the same for all clients (of the same OS type) [Y], or does it change its price for a given client based on how many USERS would be affected if it went down [N]? |
| 242. | IF the answer to the above question is NO, how does this product determine compliance? Does it determine the number of users based on the [P] local password file, the number of users [L] logged into a server at a given point, the number of users in the [Y] YP password list, some [O] other monitoring method, or [N] no monitoring method? |
| 243. | Are "device servers" (a client w/a tape drive who can back up itself or other machines) part of the base price for a client [Y], or does it cost more to turn a client into a "device server." [N]? |
| 244. | For tape libraries, does this product charge based on the number of [S] slots, the number of [D] drives, or a [U] uniform price regardless of the size of the library? |
| 245. | Backup software companies continue to improve their products and new features. Some of these features (e.g. HSM, or online backups for Oracle) are sometimes considered "add-ons," and the product without the add-ons is called the "base product." How these are priced varies from company to company. Some companies make all upgrades available for free to customers who are paying maintenance. Other companies would consider the new base product and its accompanying add-ons a new version, and believe it is not covered under maintenance. Therefore, even existing customers who are paying maintenance would pay to upgrade to the new version. And finally, some companies would never charge a maintenance customer to upgrade the base product, but would charge extra to receive a new add-on. Which of following best describes this product? All upgrades and add-ons are always [F] free to existing customers who are paying maintenance. Some upgrades are considere! ! d "major" upgrades and are made available to maintenance customers for a (possibly reduced) [P] price. Base products are upgraded free for maintenance customers, but significant new features become [A] add-ons which are available as an extra cost to the customer. |
| 246. | Does the license expire? If a customer decides to stop using this product, or to stop paying maintenance to the company, will they still be able to backup and restore [Y], or must they continue paying maintenance in order for the product to function normally [N]? |
| 247. | If licenses expire, has some provision been made to provide license extensions in case the company goes out of business? |
| 248. | ***MISCELLANEOUS*** Is Tech Support available via email? |
| 249. | Is Tech Support available via phone? |
| 250. | What was the date of this product's last major release |
| 251. | What is the expected date of this product's next major release |
| 252. | What platform was the product originally designed for, [M] MVS, [U] UNIX, [W] NetWare, or [N] NT? |
| 253. | Is this product (and its accompanying add-ons) this company's sole product? |
| 254. | What are the standard support hours for this product in EST time |
| 255. | Can customers get extended support hours if they purchase a support agreement? |
| 256. | Can customers get on-site support? |
| 257. | If so, is this done by contracting with a local service provider [Y], or is someone flown out from a central site [N]? |
| 258. | Can customers purchase the product directly from you [Y], or must they go through a VAR [N]? |
| 259. | If the customer purchased the product from a VAR, do they still call you for support [Y], or must they deal with the VAR for support [N]? |
| 260. | Do you have a knowledge base available on the web? |
| 261. | What is the largest number of machines being backed up by one server at one of your current clients? |
| 262. | What is the largest size box being backed up by this product (at one of your clients) [in GB]? |
| 263. | Is this product sold under a different name by anyone else? |
| 264. | If the answer to the above question is yes, are those versions simply the same software under a different name [Y], or are the resold versions a [S] stripped down version of your product, or and [O] older version of your product (Multiple answers possible)? |
| 265. | Are all porting efforts supported by you [Y], or do you allow partners to port your software to other platforms [N]? |
| 266. | If answer to above is yes, will these 3rd party ported versions work with the "official" server product provided by your company ? |
| 267. | Approximately how many years has this product been on the market? |
| 268. | I would like to request one reference customer. This should be a customer who can verify a lot of the functionality described in this RFI. This reference will NOT be listed in the book, and this person will only be contacted by me during the research phase. |
| 269. | ***OPERATING SYSTEMS*** (See Note 4 at the end of this RFI for information about the following table.) What type of port does this product have to each operating system? There are three possible answers to this question. It can be a "client only" [C]. This means that this product CAN BACK IT UP natively, but it CANNOT HAVE TAPE DRIVES. (Some products can back up via NFS. That is a separate issue addressed in another question. Just because a product can NFS mount a partition from a client and then back it up, this does not mean that this product has a client for that OS.) The next level of functionality would be a "device server" [D]. This means that it this product can back it up natively, but it CAN ALSO HAVE TAPE DRIVES. The final level of functionality would be the master backup server [S]. This is the central server that controls all the backups, and usually contains the backup catalogs. (Please Note: if this product can be a device serve! ! r or a server, do not list that it can also be a client. That is implied! However, not all servers can be device servers, so if a product can be both of them, please list both of them.) |
| 270. | Does this product support the backup of all file types in UNIX (files, directories, block special files, character special files, and named pipes)? |
| 271. | Is the product compliant with the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE)? |
| 272. | Can this product back up the Transarc DFS (Distributed File System), its ACL's, and any other special data contained within it? |
| 273. | ***DATABASES*** (See Note 5 at the end of this RFI.) Can this product back up Informix data to its volumes via the ontape utility ? |
| 274. | Can this product back up Informix data to its volumes via the onbar utility ? |
| 275. | Can this product back up Informix data to its volumes via the SQL Backtrack utility ? |
| 276. | Can this product back up Oracle data to its volumes LIVE via standard commands (sqldba/svrmgrl) without the use of the EBU ? |
| 277. | Can this product back up Oracle data to its volumes via the Enterprise Backup Utility/EBU (obackup) ? |
| 278. | Can this product back up Oracle data to its volumes via the SQL Backtrack utility ? |
| 279. | Can this product back up Sybase data to its volumes via the dump database utility (4.x) ? |
| 280. | Can this product back up Sybase data to its volumes via the Backup Server (10.x and higher.) ? |
| 281. | Can this product back up Sybase data to its volumes via the SQL Backtrack utility ? |
| 282. | Can this product back up SAP/R3 data to its volumes via the SAP API ? |
| 283. | Can this product back up Lotus Notes data to its volumes ? |
| 284. | Can this product back up DB2 data to its volumes ? |
| 285. | Can this product back up SQL Server data to its volumes ? |
| 286. | Can this product back up MS Access data to its volumes ? |
| 287. | Can this product back up MS Exchange data to its volumes ? |
| 288. | If this product can back up any other special databases directly to its volumes, please list them. (Please list them below the table. Also list the OS's that this product works on.) |
| 289. | ***MISCELLANEOUS OS AND DATABASE*** (Answer the next few questions in the normal fashion.) Is this product [S] supporting, or does it [P] plan to support the NDMP initiative? |
| 290. | Does this product support the backup of the NDS (Network Directory Structure) in Novell automatically? |
| 291. | Does this product support the backup and restore of the entire Registry in NT? |
| 292. | Does this product support the backup and restore of the entire Registry in Windows95? |
| 293. | Assume that a particular user only wants to have her Windows95 workstation backed up on demand. Does this product have software that can run on that workstation and allow the user to do this? |
| 294. | If so, must she run a separate [G] GUI, or can she [R] right click on the drive in "My Computer" or "Windows Explorer" and select "Backup," or some equivalent? |
| 295. | Assume that a particular user only wants to have her NT 4.0 workstation backed up on demand. Does this product have software that can run on that workstation and allow the user to do this? |
| 296. | If so, must she run a separate [G] GUI, or can she [R] right click on the drive in "My Computer" or "Windows Explorer" and select "Backup," or some equivalent ? |
| 297. | Assume that a particular user only wants to have her MacOS 8.0 workstation backed up on demand. Does this product have software that can run on that workstation and allow the user to do this? |
| 298. | If so, must she run a separate [G] GUI, or can she [R] right click on the drive and select "Backup," or some equivalent ? |
| 299. | In NT, files can be locked in such a way that even a backup product can't see them. Can this product back up those files? |
| 300. | If the answer to the previous question is yes, does this require the customer to purchase the "St. Bernard" package? |
| 301. | When backing up databases, can this product figure out which tables/files/devices are in a database [Y], or does the administrator have to do this [N]? |