OnBar Opinions & Experiences from Experienced Users (Administrators) Wanted: Is OnBar Stable?

Greetings fellow DBAs (etc!): Our shop is 7.23 IDS Informix, Solaris, and Legato Networker. I am testing OnBar and planning its deployment (currently we do local backups using OnTape). On the surface, OnBar looks great -- fast backup performance (with a little tuning effort), and integrates reasonably well with Networker. I've just about got the whole "backup strategy" worked out. One major snag, however -- Restore tests have not worked consistently. I now fear I can't trust OnBar. Depending on the situation, I get various errors from Informix and/or Networker. One major requirement is the so-called "imported restore"; i.e., we need to be able to restore any of our routine fast parallel onbar backups to an entirely new environment, in the event that the source environment is lost in a disaster (e.g., fire). Somewhat "officially", Informix implies that this is not possible unless the "onbar -b -w" command is used (i.e., slow serial whole-instance backup). And I've heard rumors from within Legato that they have trouble supporting the "whole-instance" restore function "onbar -r -w"). And my "onbar -r -w" experiences have been as mixed as with other onbar commands. From testing, I have learned enough about the onbar architecture to show it can do more than implied in the very thin documentation from Informix and Networker. But because this is not documented, I am forced to live with uncertainty and surprises (such as "rootdbs not from same archive version as physdbs" error messages -- a problem which also exists with OnArchive...!). HENCE MY SEARCH AND PLEA! -- Are there any experienced OnBar users out there willing to share their experiences? Have you tested various types of backups and restores (whole, PIT, partial, etc.!)? Do you have a similar environment (Sun/Networker)? Did you have to expand the documentation and develop work-arounds? Did you just GIVE-UP on OnBar? Or did you trust it without doing extensive restore testing? Your comments would be of tremendous support in my effort to deploy (or discharge!) OnBar. Thanks a gig! ...Terry. tgauchat@jps.net