NetWare 6.x Clients, Groupwise, experiences ?

[johnhb]

Hi,
Is anyone out there backing up serious (100GB to 300GB) sized NetWare volumes under NetWare 6.0 or 6.5 ?

If so, are you using the 4.21 or 4.21b client ?

Are you using TSA600 or TSAFS ? Why ? Which exact version ?

Any experiences backing up large volumes like this with GroupWise files ?

What sort of throughputs are possible ?

Any tips on improving stability ?

Any success with breaking up a large volume into multiple savesets ?

Any tips would be welcome.

thanks

JohnHB

 

[Till]

Hi JohnHB

No need to mention that backups with Netware clients are never funny
We have a mixed environment of NetWare 5.x and 6.x Servers.
To answer one of your questions right in the beginning, I did not have any success backing up 6.x boxes using tsafs.nlm. For example using this it is impossible to "see" and furtheron backup Volumes located in a SAN.
We do not use GroupWise but I have configured a saveset cutoff for the volumes in general.
I am using a Client Version 4.21i provided by our support two weeks ago, it came along with an updated networkr.nlm
and this runs stable so far.
A good tip might be to configure a proper backup and let it run, do not change too many configs on the NetWare OS or client software.

Regards

Till

 

[johnhb]

Hi Till,

Thanks for the reply. In particular the fact that 4.2.1i is available is good input.

I have come across some good information on a utility called TSATEST on Novell's web site. I have not used it yet, but it apparently allows you to test the TSA functionality and performance without routing the data to NetWorker.

I will probably ask the user to run this on his large 250GB Groupwise volume to check the reliability and performance.

cheers,
Johnhb