I’ve been working with NetWorker for 12+ years now. I’ve used servers from v4.1, and clients back to the v3.x range. I’m not the most long-term NetWorker user, but I suspect I’m up in the top 10% for long-term users of the product.
Thus, I feel that I’m perfectly justified to point out my ongoing annoyance with the client GUI – particularly on Windows. Just why after all these years can’t the GUI be used to backup to a pool other than the Default pool?
Here it is, in all its aggravating failure:
I’m not a fan of the client GUI for backup – for the most part I think backup should be server initiated, and if you want to run a backup from the client then running save from the command line is reasonably easy. That being said, not everyone loves the command line like me.
There’s no justification for this ongoing failure to be able to select a backup pool in the GUI. None whatsoever. I don’t care if an EMC engineer who has worked on NetWorker for longer than I’ve been using it suggests a dozen reasons why it can’t be done, it’s … well, not enough.
Why?
Go take a look at the SQL client GUI, or the Exchange client GUI, as an example.
Both of these give the user the option to backup to another pool.
Please will someone actually take the time to update the client GUI so it’s no longer laughable?
I couldn’t agree more !!
Yep, I definitely agree. It’s always the small things that drag Networker down in my eyes.
The “feature” to not be able to direct the backup to a specific pool, just makes the GUI unusable for on-demand backup.
It’s very unfortunate because the administrator of the client is not always the administrator of the NetWorker server.
It’s good that you point this out here, hopefully EMC is watching.
And also, since you get to specify the name of the NetWorker server in the client install, it’s seems strange you have to tell the client to which NW server it’s supposed to connect to if the client is on a different subnet than the NW server.
Regards, Johannes
Hi Johannes,
I think the NMC path is possibly the best way to go … given the excellent work that’s been put into that framework, my fingers are crossed that we’ll start to see all the current client GUIs (filesystem + modules) incorporated into the framework. Logically, it makes sense. With a bit of luck if that happens, we’ll also get incorporation of pool selection…
Cheers,
Preston.