Whereas Veritas has yet to release the next version of its NetWare backup software, CA has made big improvements to ARCserve for NetWare. Although it has been around for nearly a year, it is still far superior to Backup Exec for NetWare (see review).

The cumbersome management interface has been replaced by a smarter web-based front-end that is virtually identical to its NT/2000-based counterpart. Along with support for NetWare 5.x, ARCserve adds NetWare 6 to the list although this you will first need to apply two Novell patches and a CA cumulative patch. ARCserve can also run in a pure IP environment, but this will only work if all servers are running NetWare 5.x and above. If your servers are a mix of NetWare 4.x and 5.x, you'll still need to run both IP and IPX protocols. Note that bindery mode is no longer supported.

Agents for Linux and all versions of Windows are available and the 2000 client is superior to that supplied by Veritas as it allows System State components to be backed up as a single entity. The agents now function over IP rather than IPX.

You can install both the server and manager components from a logged-in workstation although you may find this a tedious affair if you haven't applied all the latest NLMs; ARCserve continually fails until you do. Wizards make light work of backup, restore and device operations although the main interface is simple enough to navigate. Backup procedures are the same as for ARCserve 2000. You view all available systems, select directories or files to be copied, decide on the backup tape drive and then schedule the job. Backup strategies are easy to set up as ARCserve offers predefined jobs and GFS automated tape rotations can be selected and left to ARCserve to manage.

A tidy calendar view is provided, so you can easily customise these jobs to suit. File grooming has been drastically curtailed. You get just a single option to delete files that haven't been accessed for a specific time.

File interleaving, or data multiplexing, aims to improve backup performance by copying data from multiple nodes to the same tape drive simultaneously. Testing indicated that this could improve performance over sequential backup by as much as 30 per cent. File restoration is simple as ARCserve maintains a full database. You can run queries to find all file versions available and ARCserve will tell you which tape to load once you have made your selections.

Currently, there's little to touch ARCserve for features, making it a fine choice for backup in a NetWare network.

Installation 2/5
Ease of use 2/5
Features 4/5
Performance 3/5
Value for money 3/5
Overall 3/5

Price: Single Server £557, Enterprise £1,047

Contact CA 01753 241970
www.cai.com