Remember when software mostly worked?

[jsbowden]

A lot of you probably don't. Microsoft has been the dominant platform since I was in high school, and a bunch of you were only toddlers then. Sucks to be you.

I bring this up because once again, I find that a nine year old unix box (SGI Origin 200 in this instance) can run rings around a 2x Core2 Xeon that's only a few months old.

Why the fuck do the backups that took an HOUR, sometimes two, under Veritas 4.5 MP6 (daily incrementals) on Irix take so long that they're STILL FUCKING RUNNING 12 hours later on Win2k3 server on said shiny new PC Server with Veritas 6.0 MP4? Same tape library, same machines being backed up, same tape drive (plugged in to a FASTER SCSI controller no less). Six to twelve times as long to run. I haven't had a single successful full backup run since we migrated. I always have to go back and rerun the fucking things by hand and babysit them till they're fucking done.

For all their faults, I miss the various flavors of Unix I've hated over the last two decades.

Comments

[cerebresque.livejournal.com]

Because later versions of Veritas all suck monkey balls, as far as I can tell. As does just about every other piece of backup software I've tried recently, but my last employer used Veritas a lot, and so I can write epic fucking poems about how much Veritas sucks.

If you find some backup software that doesn't suck monkey balls, please tell me about it. (For reference, my value of "sucking monkey balls" is equal to "if I can outperform your software with my script, the monkey balls are being sucked".)

[mhoye.livejournal.com]

SRSLY.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I like Amanda.

But, then, I figure the backups are running overnight ANYWAY, so I trade off a potential increase in speed by scripting it (never checked to see if it really is faster) with the convenience of having the software handle getting things from remote machines, keeping track of my tape rotation, and doing differential backups in case of error.

[cerebresque.livejournal.com]

Since Veritas, in my experience, manages to do all of those things badly, and certainly worse than I can do with the scripts and a few helper applications - no gain there for me.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

This is why I use Amanda, not Veritas.

Well, actually, I use Veritas, too, and in a third place I use a plain good old-fashioned script, but, of the three, Amanda is my favourite.

[cerebresque.livejournal.com]

I like Amanda just fine on Unix, but since it doesn't run on Win32 or Win64, the amount of time that it might be of any use to me is insignificant.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

it runs under cygwin

Not the most useful of tidbits, but still true.

[cerebresque.livejournal.com]

Cygwin is an abomination in the eyes of God and man.

(Which is to say, if I wanted a bastardized Unix emulation that invents its own barely-compatible conventions, doesn't support many of the native filesystem features, and so forth, I'd run Linux in a VM.

Note to developers: If you're going to port your application to Win32, port your goddamned application. An emulation layer than enables your application to technically run but pretty much means that it will not play nice with the native environment of the other OS is not fucking porting. Not everyone has fork(). Get over it.)

[cerebresque.livejournal.com]

...slightly less rantesque; doesn't count. Cygwin applications don't play well with others.

If it won't run with just Win32/Win64 standard components available, play nicely with scripts and Win32 APIs (so I can manage the thing), and follow the platform standards so I don't get any nasty surprises from it, it can stay the hell off my systems; because I find the way to make Windows systems run well is to be pretty damn fascist about what programs get to run on them, and if I think it's playing silly buggers with the rules, it's not coming in.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

I ran Amanda for a long time before moving to Veritas. If I only had Unix(-likes) to back up, Amanda would be more than fine...it does everything I need for Unix systems. The thing is, I have more than just Unix machines to back up; I need native backups of my NetApp, and my MS SQL and MS Exchange databases. Amanda can't help me there, and it's win32 client isn't always the most robust just for nabbing the filesystems.

[dlganger.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, for all its flaws as a 2.0 product, I'm really liking DPM 2007. (Enough that I wrote a book about it.) I HATE HATE HATE doing backups, and DPM has pretty much put that particular problem to rest.

Of course, this doesn't help those who are running anything other than Windows (unless they're running it as virtual machines under MS Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1, poor sods).

[dlganger.livejournal.com]

Agree with our friend the Cerebrate there -- Veritas takes one look at a donkey with the runs and pulls out a box of straws. It sucks *that much*. The only decent product Veritas EVER put out was Volume Manager.