When looking at a potential backup product, there are many questions that you should ask yourself:
Does the product fully support my platforms?
Does the product back up raw partitions?
Does the product back up very large filesystems and large files?
How will the product help me meet extremely aggressive requirements?
Does the product back up many clients to one drive simultaneously?
Can the product automatically create multiple simultaneous backups from one client?
Does the product handle data requiring special treatment?
Does the product have storage management features?
Does the product reduce network traffic?
Does the product support a standard or unique backup format?
How easy is the product to administer?
How secure is the product?
How easily does the product perform recoveries?
How well does the product protect the backup catalog (e.g., database, index)?
How robust is the product?
How automated is the product?
Can the product verify its volumes?
What does the product cost?
What vendor is selling the product?
These issues are discussed in the following sections.