Thoughts on VMS tape management systems

[Thomas Ritter]

I have used SLS for over 10 years now. I'm in a postion to recommend a tape management system for this site, which is using a home grown system which has reached its use by date.
Is SLS still the way to go or are there other products ?

[Hoff · Accepted solution]

If SLS works for your needs and supports your drives and your hosts is comfortable and familiar, why not keep using it? (That written, SLS is in maintenance and unlikely to see new features. There are restrictions with SLS, too: no OpenVMS I64 support.)

HP has offered several alternatives for SLS over the years, including ABS and the current headline products Legato NetWorker and OpenView Data Protector (OVDP).

Check the OpenVMS Roadmap (circa slide 14) for the current plans.

http://www.hp.com/go/openvms/roadmap

With the keywords from the roadmap and such, you can find various information and product web pages at the HP OpenVMS web site, too.

[Kumar_Sanjay]

Thomas,

Not very sure about the SLS Road Map, But I am using the TAPESYS/THRUWAY in my environment. Recently I upgraded to 6.2 too

Thanks and Regards
Sanjay Kumar.

[Ian Miller.]

If you need a VMS only solution You would find TAPESYS familar (IIRC it shares a common ancestor with SLS) and it is still being developed and supported.

You may wish to look at a wider picture (few sites a VMS only) to see if a single platform solution or a multiplatform solution makes sense.

Remember that the important part is recovery - you don't need a backup strategy but a recovery strategy.

[Anton van Ruitenbeek]

Thomas,

If you are looking for OpenVMS products its not advisable to go to DataProtector or Legato.
This products are using OpenVMS as a client and backup over the backupserver because they do not have a MediaAgent for OpenVMS, only a DiskAgent (these are DataProtector names). So during backup you are relaying on these other machines (..x or ..ws). Evenso for the restore.
I should stick with SLS or ABS or other native OpenVMS products. The problem - as hoff stated - is the I64 part.

The only beauty of DataProtector and Legato (or other of these multiplatform backup solutions) is that every (blind) clicking boy/girl can hit a restore without knowing what to do on OpenVMS !

AvR

[Richard W Hunt]

CA ArcServe/BrightStor agent and the Legato agent share the same issues - work well, but a tape-ape can run the job with no knowledge of anything VMS-like.

Also, you really need a hot network to do this right. If you have lots of files AND they are big, a 10 Mb Ethernet won't cut it. A 100 Mb Ethernet run outside of prime shift (if that applies to your site) might work better. Prime shift, 100 Mb might sometimes trigger CSMA-CD collisions to go up. At least, it happened now and then for our site. The faster your network the better off you are when using agented backup schemes, whoever makes them.

ABS works OK but has a high overhead if you have lots of files on lots of disks. The problem we had was that the log files and the on-line database started increasing in terms of the required overhead to clean it up and to purge stuff relentlessly. The files can be space hogs unless you are willing to make hard choices up front and stick to them (regarding what you keep in the ABS database.)

[Uwe Zessin]

> This products are using OpenVMS as a client and
> backup over the backupserver because
> they do not have a MediaAgent for OpenVMS

Hm, I've just checked the platform and integration support matrix from 14-SEP-2007 and it says:
""Backup Device Server (media agent), including robotic control

* OpenVMS 7.3-1, 7.3-2, 8.2, 8.2-1,8.3 (Alpha)
* OpenVMS 8.2, 8.2-1, 8.3 (Itanium)""