One of TapeWares key features is its unique approach to management, which involves grouping all servers and workstations into zones. Created during installation, each zone maintains a database that holds all information about backup and restoration activity for that particular zone.
You can create multiple zones for different areas of the network but each system can only belong to one. This could prove to be a valuable security feature, as backup media created in one zone cannot be used in another.
Each tape drive and even the media must be declared to a TapeWare zone and user permissions assigned. Anyone trying to secure or restore data must have a user profile and password for the zone theyre logged into, rights to the data and permission to use a particular tape drive and media.
You can use SCSI tape devices attached to any networked system, so drives can be distributed across the network. You can secure data from any server or workstation to any tape drive anywhere in the same zone.TapeWare comes in a number of formats; the review version supported an unlimited number of servers and clients on Windows-based networks. Windows XP has been brought into the fold and disaster recovery tools extended to cover both XP and ME client systems. NetWare 6.0 support is also available and TapeWare Universal supports all Windows, NetWare and Linux systems at a reasonable cost.
Installation is swift and overheads are low as TapeWare loads as a single service. All systems in a zone must have TapeWare installed, as standard network shares are not supported. Deployment is not particularly well covered in the manual but you can install locally or via a network share.
The management console provides plenty of wizard-based help and groups all functions under a neat row of tabbed folders. Backup jobs are easy to create and users can browse only those systems they are permitted to see.
