ARCserve 2000 Disaster Recovery Plan and Bootable Tape Method

[JShum]

Has anyone tested or tried using the Bootable Tape Method of backup and restoring a server using ARCServe DR? I am in the process of gathering more information about it before purchasing the right materials to test it. It will be used in cases when we have lost the whole physical server.

I have read all documention and I know that it requires a bootable tape drive. We have two tape drives (Sony SDX-400c and python(dell) DDS4, both are internal SCSI), but when I contact the manufactures to see if they were bootable tape drives ...they tell me that the software determines if it is bootable. Yet, ARCServe tells me that the tape drive has to support One-Button Disaster Recovery (meaning bootable?).

Has anyone have any experience on whether I MUST get a bootable tape drive or will ARCServe DR somehow allow the tapes made using the software to be bootable?

I have searched through the forum without finding anything that can help me. I would appreciate any help, thanks.

 

[ARCserveGuru]

Just because you said any help, I'll just make a little comment that HP drives own one-button disaster recovery. It is activated by holding the power button I think and this puts the drive in boot mode.
g

 

[Cyklops]

Your tape drive MUST support OBDR which is indeed initiated by HP and adapted later by some other manufacturers. When you start the Disaster Recovery Boot Wizard ARCserve recognizes if the tape drive supports OBDR. If not, the option to create a 'bootable tape image' is greyed out and cannot be used.
CA's Certified Device List mention which devices support OBDR, check

http://support.ca.com/techbases/as2000/arc2000.html

regards

 

[JShum]

Thanks for your replies. I indeed knew that HP were the ones that first manufactured OBDR Tape devices. And thanks for the list of supported devices. I think we are going to opt for the CD Boot method. It seems more reliable and much less of a hassle and easier to test at the moment. Thanks again.