PresSTORE learning curve?

brandon · Knows DNS is the answer Joined: 21 Mar 2005 Posts: 31

Question for the PresSTORE veterans among us:

How would you characterize the learning curve for PresSTORE? Would you say it's on the easier end of things, say NetVault, where a reasonably intelligent engineer can RTFM and execute a successful deployment, or would you say it's on the harder end of things, say Atempo, where you'll benefit wildly from training and/or guidance?

I ask because a client has requested my involvement in a PresSTORE installation, which would be my first. I'm trying to decide my role, would appreciate any insight. Thanks,

- B -

morphenine · Xsan Master Joined: 22 Dec 2008 Posts: 126

Its GUI is sure a hec of a lot more user friendly, thats for sure. No X11 needed.

kmh01 · JBOD Joined: 03 Mar 2011 Posts: 1

Not sure where you are based but JPY plc, the distributor of Archiware PresSTORE in the UK supports all resellers and provides reseller training free of charge. The GUI is really simple and intuative and there is plenty of support information on Archiware's web site Knowledgebase for those who are just starting with PresSTORE.

abstractrude · Xsan Master Joined: 13 Mar 2008 Posts: 863

was a netbackup/netvault/backupexec user for years. learned presstore in 20 minutes literally.

macalex101 · Been around the blocks Joined: 16 Apr 2008 Posts: 21

Learned it very quickly - and when you do get issues the support from PresSTORE is awesomely good. Easily the best I have come across.

spewperb · RAID 5 Joined: 08 Jul 2010 Posts: 18

I agree... PresSTORE is a fantastic piece of software. The back up module in particular is very easy to use. I believe with v4.2 they are actually making it even simpilar (before if you wanted an A set and a B set of tapes you needed to use two back up routines however my understanding is you will only need to use one. Has anyone used this feature?). As far as the Archive module goes this also works really well. Like with all back strategies you really need to think about how you will be using it, not just now but also in the future. Once an archive database is written, its very difficult to change it. This is a deliberate design feature as it stop someone accidentally deleting the index's for years of archives.

If you are buying from the UK then I can highly recommend JPY. Whenever we have come across any problems or bugs all it takes is a quick phone call to them who fix it. They know the software inside out but are also well versed in servers and backup/archives in general.

flumignan · JBOD Joined: 12 May 2011 Posts: 4

I've been using PresSTORE for years now to back up 40-50TB of medical data. I still think it's strange product. Rather than being file-centric, it's "volume" centric. Since we do disk backups, we had to wrap our heads around the concept of virtual tapes (the volumes) being loaded into virtual "tape slots" with virtual "tape managers" and virtual "tape drives" and virtual "bar codes" and virtual "labels"... it's a mess, and a unique one at that.

When we first worked out our backup policy, we had to take into consideration that volumes have expiration, not files. So if we had a 1TB "tape" on our SAN, and it contained data from multiple plans, and that "tape" got "recycled" then all the data, even if it was only days old, got purged.

Version 4 changed that, so that fresh backups from recently performed plans gets moved to other available "tapes" before the whole volume is wiped. This seems rather simple and probably taken for granted with other backup programs that don't use this strange virtual tape scheme.

But it would be very helpful, especially for new users, if Archiware dropped this whole virtual tape paradigm altogether (for disk-to-disk backups, at least).

As an admin, I should be able to just designate x-amount of disk space to hold backups, and then only worry about setting up plans that take into consideration file retention policies, number of version, frequency of the backups and other factors without having to translate through all of these strange metaphors.

That all said, it's fast, and well supported, and the developers are very responsive, and ultimately, I recommend it. It's just the right choice for our environment. But yes, it's a challenge to master.

AWSven · partially protected Joined: 06 Jul 2010 Posts: 6

> But it would be very helpful, especially for new users,
> if Archiware dropped this whole virtual tape paradigm
> altogether (for disk-to-disk backups, at least).

Didn't want to leave that uncommented:

There is another module in PresSTORE, Synchronize, that is capable to manage a backup to disk without using the tape changer emulation.
Read more here:
http://portal.archiware.com/support/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/47/4/backup-to-disk-using-synchronize

Nevertheless the backup module still makes sense in some environments, e.g. when working in heterogenous environments. Then you will simply need these virtual volumes to store data the host OS is unable to handle on its own (like ressource forks on a Linux box).