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If you want a one source vendor who can do it all (and more than you
mention here), then I recommend SafeData.

www.safedata.com

They do complete windows/as400 and they do it "Right" and at a
competitive price.



Bentley Pearson
Vice President - Information Services
Southland National Insurance Corporation
1812 University Blvd
Tuscaloosa, Al
35403
205 345 7410
bpearson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of schmuel
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 8:16 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: iSeries and Windows Network cloud backup

Hi Folks,

We have one iSeries (running QS36F stuff) and one Windows server
(light use) making a decision on augmenting our tape backup with an
internet backup. (The company is a food importer with about 15 users.)

Here are some thoughts so far.
Please feel free to enhance or correct.

The PC-environment services (Carbonite, Mozy, DriveHQ, etc) are
doable only on a very rudimentary level for the iSeries, since they
have no direct knowledge of iSeries files. They might be usable for
the Windows Network but for the iSeries they would be awkward at
best. (e.g Copy as SAVF from iSeries to network or IFDS and then do
this and that. Restore would be less reliable than you would like)

There seem to be two software major players that are iSeries
savvy, eVault (which has a Seagate heritage) and Asigra, out of
Toronto, Asigra being more of a general (agentless) network backup
that added iSeries functions, eVault being more native iSeries. The
sense I have is that eVault may do a "better" job on iSeries, Asigra
may do a "better" job on the PC network (e.g. it does not need to
install software on each PC).

There are many iSeries backup/disaster recovery vendors which have
many competing pluses and minuses, yet they all seem to have either
eVault, Asigra or a hybrid combination (eVault for ISeries, Asigra
for network). I would like to concentrate on the software decision.

One surprise I hit on Asigra is that they apparently have no
native method of reading QS36F library, they are trying to work the
API with IBM, and in the meantime they actually make a copy of all
the files to a holding library and then backup the holding
library. Presumably they do not lose any checksum/compression
niceties in this semi-kludge method. Beyond that I was very pleased
with the Asigra network in a play-time (which I have not had with the
eVault).

So I was surprised by the lack of a direct API to QS36F, when I
work with utility software like that of Linoma they seem to be able
to handle it like any other library. On the other hand, in practical
terms this may only mean two minutes more to the backup.

Overall, I am sure there are a dozen or so little aspects that I
am not aware of. Clearly there are other factors in enterprise
backup -- that does not apply to us but feel free to share away.

And our tape backups are quite solid, including taking off-site,
so this is meant more for auxiliary than anything else -- minor
restores will likely be few and far between, since we could use the
tape and simply do not do a lot of restores.

Your thoughts and experiences ?

eVault, Asigra, hybrid of the two or other ?

Generally speaking the price ranges for a small backup service
with these methods is between $100 to $150 a month, some higher, one
or two lower, you can get into 25 Gigabtye levels and compression
ratios and stuff -- but I know we will be the low-end.

Thanks.

Shalom,
Steven
Queens, NY


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