Windows 2000 Magazine (now WindowsIT Pro)
by Ed Roth
October 2001
UltraBac 6.3 Enterprise Edition
UltraBac arrived in a folder that contained one CD-ROM and a printed User’s Manual. I used the Full Install option to install the software on my backup server. Because the agent for UNIX systems is a recent addition to UltraBac, I needed to download and install a beta version of UltraBac 6.3 to enable this functionality. Per an UltraBac support technician’s request, I updated the driver for the autochanger in Win2K with an UltraBac-supplied driver. Then, to ensure that the application properly enumerated all the tape library’s slots and drives, I opened the UltraBac program and selected Media Changer from the Tools menu.
UltraBac doesn’t offer any client-side software for Windows computers. To transport backup data, the product uses standard Windows network connections. UltraBac also offers no client-side software components for SQL Server, although you must install the SQL Client Network Utility on the backup server to enable appropriate access.
To install the product’s NetWare Agent, I copied one NetWare Loadable Module (NLM) file to the NetWare server and added a line to the autoexec.ncf file to load the new NLM on startup. Installing the UNIX Agent was also a relatively easy task. I simply used FTP to send a file to the Solaris system, unzipped it, and used the Pkgadd command to install it. Then, I ran the password-generation utility and restarted inetd (i.e., a UNIX daemon, similar to services in the Windows world) to prepare the system for backup operations.
A Very Simple Interface
UltraBac’s interface, which Figure 7 shows, isn’t as slick as some of the other products’ interfaces, but it’s straightforward and effective. The first time you open the interface, Backup mode appears. From the Mode menu, you can select Restore, Verify, and Archive mode, and you can set any of these options as the default mode. The interface doesn’t change as you select different modes, but available menu options do.
Tape Library and Media Control
Before UltraBac can be a serious contender in the enterprise backup and recovery arena, the company needs to improve its tape-library and media control. Although the product successfully recognized the ADIC tape library and let me easily perform manual media functions, the lack of media-allocation and drive-allocation automation is a drawback. Also, the product somewhat oversimplifies media management for large environments and lacks automated features for implementing a comprehensive media-management scheme. However, UltraBac does contain a facility for manually creating copies of tapes for archiving or redundancy.
Backup
Because I didn’t need to install any agents on most of my environment’s clients, I was able to start backing up systems 30 minutes after I installed the software. The processes of creating and running backup jobs are simple. You first create sets, which contain the set of files you want to back up. Then, you create a group, which contains one or more sets. You perform backups by groups. To create backup sets for the various machines in my environment, I selected New from the Backup menu. A wizard helped me define the set that I wanted to back up. Next, the software wrote a text-file definition for the set to the UltraBac directory. To create additional backup sets, I modified several of these intuitively formatted text files and saved them under different names.
To create a group, you choose Schedule Backups from the Scheduler menu. You use the Scheduler dialog box for both scheduling and configuring backup groups. A large array of settings are available at the group level—including device targeting, verification, and media handling. After you configure a schedule and add one or more sets to the group, you click Run Now to immediately execute the specified backups. I configured multiple groups (logically organized by computer type), then tried scheduling some jobs and manually running the remaining jobs. The Exchange Mailbox backup methodology relies on Messaging API (MAPI) to read and create temporary .pst files that the system backs up to tape. Therefore, you must install and configure an Exchange client on the backup server. All the backup jobs executed as expected.
Data Recovery
To enable the restore-associated menus in UltraBac’s interface, I selected Restore from the Mode menu. To initiate a restore, I could choose to load the index from either the storage media or from disk. For my restore activities, I used the indexes stored on disk. After I chose which index to use, the software displayed a list of available backups to restore. I then selected the objects I wanted to restore from a Windows Explorer like interface and clicked Perform Restore. UltraBac supports individual table restores for SQL Server 6.5 and file-group level restores for SQL Server 2000 and 7.0. The product doesn’t offer a point-in-time restore option. Restore operations in my environment worked as expected and performed nicely.
Performance
Backup and restore performance was impressive; however, the inability to automatically use multiple drives and multiple data streams will be a drawback in busy backup environments. To use multiple drives simultaneously, I needed to schedule multiple groups to execute at the same time allowing some buffer time so that robot activities from one job could finish before another job started.
| UltraBac Software Note: This was a misunderstanding on the part of the reviewer. It is NOT necessary to schedule groups to start at different times as stated to avoid robot-use conflicts -- if two groups need to use the medium-changer component at the same time, one will get to use it first and complete its operation, while the other group waits for the operation to complete. Once the first group completes, the 2nd group will take over the operation of the medium-changer while the 1st group continues with the backup. All medium-changer operations are completed atomically -- there is no possibility of a group interjecting a medium-changer command while a group is in the middle of an atomic operation. |
A Scrappy Competitor
Given UltraBac’s simple and compact design, I didn’t expect it to perform as well as it did. Although the product requires some server-side software (i.e., Microsoft Exchange Administrator, an Exchange client, and a SQL Server client) to enable special backups, the functionality that the product provides without requiring client-side agents is impressive. Automated media and device management, however, isn’t UltraBac’s strong suit. The product doesn’t intelligently load-balance between drives to exploit the power of multidrive tape libraries. UltraBac’s low price and operation simplicity make it an attractive option for organizations that don’t require highly automated performance management for their backup operations. However, if Win2K System State backups are important to you, the current version’s inability to perform them on remote clients could be a serious detriment.
| UltraBac Software Note: This final statement is true only if remote Win2K System State backups are important to you. We do provide local Win2K System State backup capability. |
Ed Roth is a network manager for a government institution and contributing editor and product reviewer for Windows IT Pro.
E-mail address: eroth@windowsitpro.com.
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