Yeah, 1999 is pretty old! A lot has changed since then, both with the built-in and commercial software.
NTBackup in WIn2k is nothing more than Veritas CrippleWare, meant to entice you to buy the full featured version.
I do not use the SQL Agent from CA, choosing instead to have all my SQL servers do their own backup to a very large drive on the box running ARCServe. ARCServe in turn just backs up the large local drive. The benefit is that I can accurately schedule the SQL backups as often as I want and not reliant on the tape schedule which depends on all the jobs that preceed it.
It also gives me 'belt and suspenders' security with multiple copies of the backup, both on the large local drive and on tape. This is also the suggested methodology for the built-in backup proggy.
_________________________
Give a man a fish and he will be back for more. Slap him with a fish and he will go away forever.
