I've upgraded my in-house SCO and Linux machines to BackupEdge 01.02.00 (aka "SS") and have been generally very happy, although I can't say that I necessarily use all of the features they have added. The new version has much better scheduling capabilities, permitting multiple types of backups on multiple overlapping schedules (for example, master backups at night and differential or incremental backups mid-day.)
I like the flat restore feature (all files restored to a single directory), although I think that was in 01.01.08.
I also like being able to backup to CDRW and DVD/RAM drives (although some may argue that the benefits of a sophisticated tape control program like BackupEdge are not needed as much on media that works like a disk.)
I really like the ability to backup over a network, which I am now doing to backup up my Linux laptop to my Tandberg Streamer installed in my SCO server.
I also like the fact that you can now create bootable CD images, and if you don't have a CDRW on your LINUX/SCO box, you can still copy the image to a PC to burn the CD. (Given the all the potential capabilities of the RecoverEdge mechanism, such as remote via network or modem recovery, it is very difficult now to trim the LINUX kernel down to fit on a diskette. But it's not a problem on CD.)
If you use HP tape drives, the newer ones support "OBDR" (One Button Disaster Recovery) which is a fancy way of saying that you can make your standard backup tapes be bootable from the tape drive. (I know, Alpha was way out in front on that one!)
In general they seem to have make a lot of little improvements as well. For example, there is now a simple menu option to display the TapeAlert information that most smart drives now keep for diagnostics.
If you have not already done so and you sell or support BackupEdge, I recommend establishing yourself as an authorized reseller, even if you buy from a distributor (like DTR). You get even better support (although the regular email support is quite good anyway) and you can get very good prices on in-house copies (one for each OS type) and especially for upgrading your in-house copies. (I think the upgrade was $20.)
They just released "build 4" for download from the web site, which fixes a number of minor bugs; use that one rather than an older version that comes on any media you order. The download/updating process is very simple with the standalone executable elf file.
The one complaint that we have both had is that their interface seems to demand a good "console" emulator (either scoansi or linux). (It could be a lot worse by demanding a graphics interface, like some backup programs do.) They say that a good Wyse50 emulation should work, but I have not had much success with that nor time to work it out. In the past, I've used the SCO TermLite program (like you), although it seems to not work so well anymore either. However, I have discovered another console emulator (actually recommended by Microlite) which works great for both SCO and LINUX consoles - Anzio Lite. ($25 from
www.anzio.com) One final testimonial for the value of a good backup program: I recently had a situation with a client who built their own Linux box and I sold them a Tandberg tape drive and BackupEdge to backup their A-Shell application (after lecturing them about the perils of relying on tar and a cheap tape drive.) Well, the new setup backed up ok, and even did a file-level verify ok, but would generate about a dozen bit-level verify errors on each tape. Naturally they blamed the tape drive, which Tandberg replaced. Then they blamed the backup software, especially since tar was not complaining. I had them replace the SCSI cables, disk, and RAM, and otherwise check out every aspect of the hardware. Problem continued. We talked to MicroLite and they were very helpful in suggesting ways to narrow down the problem. Eventually we were able to demonstrate scattered byte discrepancies (using VERIFY and DIR/H) between a set of files backed up with tar and restored to another location with tar, which eliminated the possibility of it being BackupEdge's fault. And finally when they switched to a slower CPU, the problem went away entirely. (In other words, it was probably a case of the motherboard not being fast enough for the CPU, or otherwise flaky, or the CPU was bad.)
The important point was that here was a very serious data integrity problem in the system (random byte changes during disk/memory/tape transfers) which would have probably gone for years without detection or proper diagnosis if not for the byte-level verify option in BackupEdge. (The normal file-level verify consists of comparing a hash of the file on tape to a hash written at the end of the file when the file was backed up; this never saw an error because the errors were occuring in the data channel before the data got to the tape controller.)
For those of you relying on tar or cpio, I strongly recommend that you create a DIR/H listing at the start of a backup and save it on the tape, and then periodically restore the tape to a new location and verify it. This is the only way you can be absolutely sure you don't have errors of the type just described.
While on the subject, I also recommend that you periodically verify that your tapes can be read by another tape drive and machine, since in the case of fire or theft, you will be forced to do exactly that. Especially with DAT tapes, it is not uncommon for alignment differences to make tapes unreadable on all but the original tape drive.
