HP OpenView OmniBack II 3.5
OmniBack II comes in a trifold cardboard case that contains three CD-ROMs and a six-page Quick and Easy Installation Guide. The three CD-ROMs hold installation files for Win2K, NT, and HP-UX servers and many supported clients. OmniBack II uses the term cell to describe a network environment that contains a Cell Manager (i.e., the backup server), clients, and backup devices. I accepted the default installation of components to my Cell Manager, then selected additional check boxes to install documentation and the SQL Server and NetWare components that my test environment required.
The installation took about 1 minute, after which the Next Step Wizard automatically opened and walked me through the steps of adding clients and users and configuring a backup device. I clicked the wizard's Add New Clients button to open the Add Client Systems window in the OmniBack II User Interface for Windows. This easy-to-use interface lets you select client software to install on individual Windows-based computers.
An HP support technician instructed me to download and install the latest OmniBack II patch from the company's Web site. The 35MB patch, OMNIBACK_00017, applies general fixes and enables single-mailbox restore functionality for Exchange Server. After the patch's installation, I right-clicked specific client icons and chose Add Components from the resulting menu to install the SQL Server component on the appropriate clients. To verify that I'd installed the correct component on each client, I checked each client's Properties dialog box.
I clicked the wizard's Configuring Device button to open the New Device window. I followed the Quick and Easy Installation Guide's recommendations for autoconfiguring the backup device. The autoconfiguration ran for about 1 minute, installing and configuring my tape library. After I ran a few tests, however, I discovered that OmniBack II hadn't properly configured the hardware. I worked on the problem with the help of HP engineers, but the software and the IBM LTO tape drives in the library wouldn't cooperate long enough to permit testing. At press time, the IBM drive isn't yet on HP's supported-drive list for OmniBack II. I was able to use the ADIC tape library to test OmniBack II's functional capabilities, but I had to use a standalone DLT 8000 tape drive for my backup and restore tests.
OmniBack II User Interface for Windows
The OmniBack II User Interface for Windows, which Figure 6 shows, is the centralized management interface. The Context List, in the top left corner, is a drop-down list of management-task categories: Clients, Users, Devices & Media, Backup, Restore, Reporting, OmniBack Database, and Monitor. Below the Context List is the Scoping pane, which contains a treeview of items that you can select to open a corresponding view. The software displays the view's contents in the large Results area. The interface was intuitive, and the contextual approach simplified navigation to appropriate portions of the interface.
Tape Library and Media Control
OmniBack II offers robust and easy-to-use media-management capabilities. Extensive control over media pools, data expiration, media availability, and media cataloging help you implement an effective media-allocation and protection scheme. Media copying and vaulting operations are also available to help you protect archive media. Multiple OmniBack II cells can share media-specific information. OmniBack II also offers features (e.g., mailslot, barcode, cleaning tape, and library-sharing support) that optimize usage with large tape libraries.
Backup
The process of creating a backup job is simple and effective. To back up an OmniBack II client, you switch to the Backup context, then choose from the list of Backup Specifications the type of backup you want to perform. (Available specifications in my environment were Filesystem and MSSQL.) Next, the software prompts you to choose a template to apply to the backup. You can choose from a selection of precreated templates for typical backup jobs, or you can create custom templates for your environment. The templates contain specifications (e.g., backup options, file selections, device options) for backup jobs. You can modify any of these template specifications and set a schedule for the backup job before choosing to save, start, or start a preview of the backup. File-system and SQL Server database backups worked smoothly and performed impressively.
Data Recovery
Restoring data from a backup is similar to initiating a backup. You switch to the Restore context, choose the type of backup from which you want to restore, and select the appropriate files or directories to restore. Tabs along the top of the Results area let you precisely control the method of the restore. Before you start a restore job, you can specify options for alternate destination, file-conflict handling, and pre-execution and post-execution commands. The software supports individual-table restores for SQL Server 6.5 and filegroup-level restores for SQL Server 2000 and 7.0. OmniBack II doesn't offer a point-in-time restoration option. If you have any concerns about potential restore problems, you can use the Preview Restore option, which initiates a dry run of the restore. To proactively identify which media are necessary to complete a restore, you simply click the Preview Restore button before you start the operation. You can also access details about restore operations in the OmniBack Database context, under Sessions.
Performance
The online Concepts document provides an overview of factors that affect backup and restore performance. In addition to hardware-related considerations, the document discusses OmniBack II's Load Balancing feature, as well as the pros and cons of one-to-one and many-to-few object and media schemes. Generally, you have a great deal of flexibility when deciding whether to concentrate performance considerations on backups or restores. When you back up and restore data, OmniBack II prompts you to select a network load value of High, Medium, or Low. I accepted the default value of High in my tests. The software's performance during all my backup and restore operations on the DLT drive looked good, but I couldn't directly compare the results with other products' results, which I used the four-drive library to obtain.
High Overhead, but Easy to Use
OmniBack II's easy-to-navigate interface and thoroughly organized online documentation were impressive. The product's reporting functionality was also user-friendly and robust. OmniBack II's CPU and memory utilization on the backup server was higher than that of the other products. An HP representative informed me that the high utilization results were due to the number of objects I had inserted into the catalog (i.e., database). Apparently, for the next product version, HP is planning to reduce the utilization by introducing a flat-file catalog, which will let you write more records in a more streamlined way. One concern you might have when dealing with HP's technical support for OmniBack II is that because of the time-zone differential between Germany (where most of this product's technical experts reside) and the United States, you might experience delays just when you need to resolve a mission-critical problem.
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