Legato will pack fulls and incrementals into the same tapes, or, separate tapes, depending upon how you set up storage pools. I'd say the waste of tape comes from having to perform periodic full/differential backups, depending upon your schedule. If you mix multiple retention periods on the same tape, or, similar retension periods that are spread across a long time (several months), you can get one little old file keeping a tape from being recycled. This used to really bug me - one little old file holding up a 25gb tape from being reusable. There is no way to move a backup from one tape to another to free up the tape.
On the other hand, you don't need a huge disk pool, a batch window to run migration/reclamation/expiration, enough library to hold all your local tapes online, will allow you to split storage pools across multiple libraries, a much lighter weight catalog than tsm, and, a automated/automatic catalog backup system that requires nothing more than the normal client level backup of the Legato server. I can't believe I just did that - I actually said something kind of good about Legato. I was sooo happy to get rid of Legato. It was buggy sftw and had the absolute worse tech support I've ever delt with. rick On 17 Apr 2002 at 10:19, Gerald Wichmann wrote: > Not specifically TSM question but more of a question to better > understand how to discuss pro's/cons to other competing products. > > Since my background is all TSM, I'm curious on how the other > competitors handle media. Is my assumption correct that they waste a > lot of tape space? As far as I understand it, all these products do > traditional full/incremental type backups where each full and > incremental "uses a tape". Thus Server 1 would suck up 7 tapes in a > week (1 full, 6 incrementals). > > Is this true? Or can these products actually put 2 full's on a single > tape? Or multiple incrementals on a single tape? >
