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Thanks for the quick info on this. Aside from the licensing issue I really thought this was a satisfactory product, my rant may have made it sound otherwise. On Tue, 2010-04-13 at 17:43 -0400, Adam McDougall wrote: > On 04/13/10 15:55, Joseph M. Deming wrote: > > For many years we used BakBone's NetVault application with reasonable > > satisfaction. They provide updates twice annually, the annual support > > cost was reasonable for our small/mid size data. They have a fair base > > package with a whole slew of add-on licenses for particular use. > > Periodically, their updates would introduce bugs that broke a job and we > > had to work with support to fix it (usually deleting a config file > > somewhere in the program files then re-creating the job under the newest > > version, so usually nothing nasty). > > > > It supports Unix& Windows clients, can do disk --> disk, then copy that > > to tape, or go straight to tape. The to-disk option was an additional > > license I believe, direct to tape comes in the base package. Still, it > > takes a bit of monitoring and babysitting to assure it is running > > week-by-week, but all backup solutions do in my experience. > > > > VERY ANNOYINGLY, when we decided to stop paying our annual licensing > > fees recently and move to open-source, we were left with what was a > > 'perpetual' license that no longer was eligible for updates. However, 2 > > months later when we rebuilt our backup server with new hardware, and > > tried to install the 'perpetual' license so we could use BakBone for > > recovery purposes from our old tapes, the program complained about an > > invalid license. This is because the license from BakBone was generated > > and tied to the original machine name and some hash of it's hardware > > (like M$ loves to do). When we contacted BakBone and asked to generate > > a new license so we could use are properly purchased and licensed > > software on this new machine, we were told that we would have to pay 10% > > of the cost of the software. So, they were basically holding our data > > hostage for a cost of between $250-$1,000 depending on whether they > > wanted 10% of the support cost or 10% of the original software purchase > > cost. And, yes, the original cost of the backup package we bought (if > > you did the math) is a bit alarming, but we had some 15 client licenses, > > disk-to-disk option, and a couple other features making us purchase the > > 'datacenter' package. A basic package was much cheaper in terms of the > > original software cost. > > I believe the trial demo is fully functional for at least 30 days and > you can still use it to restore data. It can be installed over and over > again on unix at least. Thats not to say the company is not deceptive > about licensing.