Backups When Mediahost != Server

[Mike Jipping]

We just picked up an Exabyte 8mm tape unit.  I'm wondering the BEST way to
use as a backup system.  I need a little advice.  In our configuration, we
have a 3/160 server providing all the home directories and doing lots of
grunt work (news, mail host, etc).  The rest of our units are SS-1s (with
local disk for executables and swap).  It seems that every vendor I spoke
with puts Exabytes with SPARCstations, not 3/160s.  SOOO...we are doing
the same.  We have a SS-1 as a backup server for the network, and every
night, that unit backs up all the filesystems across the network that need
to be backed up.

Ok...but consider this.  What happens when the server has a disk crash?
Let's say that / and /usr are hosed.  Now I want to retrieve them from
backup.  How do I do it?  Does the mini-root have "rrestore" in its
command set?  And what if I'm using a non-standard dump/restore program,
say, like "8mmbackup" (which uses "cpio") or "supersaver" (which uses its
own format)?  What then?

Maybe I should dump off just / and /usr on the server...  

FYI: we're running SunOS 4.1.

Thanks for the help.  Send stuff to me and I'll summarize.

      Mike Jipping                        Internet: jipping at cs.hope.edu
      Hope College                          BITNET: JIPPING at HOPE
      Department of Computer Science         Voice: Hey!