>Thanks for your information. My question now is did you "have to" purchase
>the DDS-3 tape drive or could you have chosen any Retrospect-supported drive
>(like an AIT-style tape drive)? OS X apparently comes with a OmniGroup
>backup program that supports DDS-3 and DDS-4 tape drives (see reference at:
>http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigroupbackup/supportedhardware/content.
>html>
>but there is not "sanctioned" support for AIT-style drives yet. However, if
>the drive supports the "SCSI-3 command set" then it "should work" according
>to OmniGroup if it operates with "/dev/rst0" (raw SCSI tape device??)
I think that if you have a compatible SCSI card (like the 2930) and a
tape drive that Retrospect "likes", you're in business. I have no proof
or experience of this, but in my case, I just plugged in the SCSI card,
hooked up the drive, loaded Retrospect onto the Blue Box, and it ran. I
think you'd probably have success with other types and brands of drives,
as long as Retrospect supports them.
>We are interested in the OS X server for its support of Netboot but we also
>plan to offer a file server and to run the DAVE program on it to support PC
>access using SMB (DAVE allows PC to see a Mac drive as another "network"
>drive) -- I have received confirmation from DAVE tech support stating that
>their program will run under the Blue Box/OS 9 compatibility window.
I believe there is a compiled version (or at least one you can compile)
of SAMBA for OS X. That would give you native SMB support for Windows
file sharing without having to depend on the Blue Box. I try to rely on
Blue Box as little as possible, since it takes away from other system
resources...
>Can you also tell me the specs for your OS X server? Memory? Number of
>drives and their sizes? We have priced out a G4 server with 256MB memory and
>3-18GB Ultra2 SCSI drives from Apple Educational sales for $4,957. I want to
>add another 256MB of memory and a tape drive for a total of under $10K. Any
>other software or hardware that your in your experience I should really
>consider?
Well, this was back in August I think (although I'll be setting up
another in July). It was a G3/450 256MB/2x9GB U2 SCSI. I timed a
simultaneous NetBoot of 36 clients (I walked from one to the next
pressing the power key)-- 18 G3s and 18 iMacs-- using _only_ the
server's built-in 100Base-T port. It took me just over two minutes to
walk by each machine and start them up (they were in adjoining rooms).
The last one was at the login screen less than 3.5 minutes from when I
started the first one! Simply amazing speed and capability... This was
all over 100Base-T, of course (switches, I think).
I added that 2930 card for the tape drive (and had to get a HD-50 to
Cent50 cable instead of the DB-25 to Centronics it had), but I think you
could probably hook it up to the U2 SCSI card if you wanted to, without
really losing any speed. You'd have to find a 68-pin to whatever cable or
adapter though...
Other thoughts-- I guess just make sure you have the very best network
setup you can get (if it's good enough, it doesn't even feel like they
aren't booting internally!). Also, plan to spend plenty of time learning
the idiosynchrasies of the NetBoot environment-- some programs need a
little tweaking to work with the system. That should do it... Any other
questions, I'll be happy to answer.
Good luck!
Fred
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