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Contents 
Introduction
BrightStor Arcserve
Legato Networker
Tivoli Storage Manager
Veritas Backup Exec
Specifications
How we tested
Checklist
Editor's choice
About RMIT |
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Originally developed as a backup tool for Novell Netware ARCserve now has support for a wide range of network operating systems including Windows, various flavours of Linux and Unix, and even Mac OS X. The list of databases supported via agents is quite extensive.
Support for media is thankfully broad and encompasses optical media, tape, hard disk, and even SAN. Backup jobs include full, incremental, Bare Metal Disaster Recovery and Image backup. In the last case, very fast backups are achieved by bypassing the file system and reading the disk block by block. The software comprises various utilities, many of which can be launched from the Backup Manager which is a centralised management tool for your entire infrastructure. Remote systems can be backed up and restored while monitoring job status. ARCserve can utilise its own database to store the management and admin data, or if you prefer, an SQL database that must be installed prior to ARCserve.
ARCserve features multistreaming and can multiplex up to 32 streams with automatic job redirection if a media or device error should occur. An interesting inclusion in the features list is on-the-fly scanning of the backup data stream using eTrust AntiVirus. This can be disabled but we did not find much of a performance hit with having it enabled. Tape management is quite good also with barcode support and media rotation for large tape libraries.
The interface is simple and colourful with logical button design and function placement. There are also status indicators to show if the tape and database engines are running. The software is very simple to use but to make it even easier, wizards for Backup, Restore, Scheduling, Device Configuration, and Diagnostics are provided. Of course, you can bypass the user interface if you wish and launch tasks using relatively simple command line scripts.
The list of predefined reports is extensive, and we can't see much room for improvement. Scheduling jobs is straightforward but does not have some of the flexibility of other products, such as randomising start times or defining backup time windows. Should a problem occur, the Alert Manager should be able to trap it and at the same time provide a wide variety of notifications from e-mail to pagers.
| Product | CA Brightstor ARCserve Backup release 11.1 |
| Price | AU$5125 |
| Vendor | Express Data/Tech Pacific |
| Phone | 1800 999 985 |
| Web | www.ca.com |
| Interoperability |  ½ |
| Excellent server and client OS support. | |
| Futureproofing |  ½ |
| Good features set and the ability to handle well beyond the test scenario. | |
| ROI |
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| Quite good value for money, includes one year support and maintenance. | |
| Service | 
½ |
| Good support but not as responsive as similarly priced solutions, notably Backup Exec. | |
| Rating | 
½ |
