Syncsort

Hey all,

I've been tasked with evaluating Syncsort. I'm wondering if anyone has
any experiences (good or bad) with the product. I'll be putting it in
my lab when the 2.2 GA comes out, but it's not a full fledged lab, so I
won't be able to do full scale operational-type testing...

Comparisons to other backup products are welcome. I've done
implementations of NetVault (nice), NetBackup (nice), and Brightstor
Enterprise (not so nice).

Specifically, here are the key components I'm looking at:

- NDMP: Does the server to filer and filer to filer NDMP work as
advertised?
- Documentation: How does it stack up, do you think?
- SAN environments: Is it as flaky as, say, BEB in a SAN, or is it
really as easy as they say it is?
- Reporting: How does the reporting stack up to other products?
(IMHO, all of the previously mentioned products have sketchy
built-in reporting)
- Command line: Is it as robust as NetBackup, or as lacking as BEB, or
somewhere in between?
- Disk to disk: how easy (or hard) is it to replicate selected D2D
backups on tape? Can it be configured as part of the job?
- Catalog: How does the catalog perform when it's really large?

Any impressions of the product are welcome; I'm starting from zero on
this....

Thanks in advance,
--paul