🚀 go-pugleaf

>We'd like to allow users to do application "backups".  I use the term
>"backups" loosely so as not to prejudiced towards/against either
>VMARCH/VMBACKUP.
>
>Things we've considered:

How about.....

5) User application is quiesced, then an exec does the necessary
DDR operations to take a physical dump of all minidisks to a
single tape set.

+ Physical dump, so it handles any sort of data, all in sync
  all at once
+ Reasonably fast
+- Multiple tapes handled, but no catalog, easy to clobber tape
- Physical dump, so you can't do a file-level restore or a
  partial restore in case of tape problems
- Some people remember old DDR horror stories
- An old snapshot won't restore once you sell your last 3380

I'd vote for Archive if I were you, but since every day we do
the above such procedure to dump our entire 10,000 cylinders
of EMC2 (e-mail database) to tape, here's another option.

/Rich Wiggins, Computer Lab, Michigan State U