Backing up multiple Online Engines - how ?

I'm looking for some ideas on an backup strategy We develop a product which contains amongst other Informix products two Online Engines (one on a Tandem Integrity S2 and the other on a SUN Sparc10, both running SVR3 variants.) My problem is that I administer 4 such systems, hence I have 8 Online Engines to be backed up; all of these are on the same LAN. Informix maintain that each engine requires a dedicated tape device for its archive, and only one engine may be put on a given tape. Typically, the disk partitions for these engines database and logs is under 1Gb and I have a couple of 8mm tape drives capable of storing 5Gb, so I should have amble space on two tapes to physically hold the backups. This should imply that if I place a tape in each of my two drives, write a simple script to rsh onto the relevent hosts and then use tbtape, I should be able to backup all my databeses....and so I can. The problem is when it comes to restoring any other than the first database backed up on a given tape. There is no mechanism for fast forwarding past x number of databases. BTW we run Informix 4.10 Some thoughts/suggestions I've had are 1 backup the database to a cooked file and let your nightly backup of the Unix FS pick it up - is this possible/feasible 2. write a dummy file at the end of each engines backup and use that as the marker for fast forwarding when you want to restore. Is this possible/feasible. All Informix have said is that the only guaranteed method of backup is a dedicated tape per online engine, but they will consider any solution I could come up with. Personally, in the age of networks and interconnectivity (and database competition lets not forget) I think this is pretty lame. Has anyone else a similar situation or solution Thanks, ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- _ _ Richard T. Scannell | Ph: +353-21-357101 _/ \\_/ \\_ Motorola Ireland Ltd. | Fax: +353-21-357635 / \\_/ \\_/ \\ Cellular Infrastructure Div | UUCP: ...uunet!motcid!glas!richs \\_/ \\_/ \\_/ Blackrock, Cork, Ireland. | Internet: richs@glas.rtsg.mot.com -----------------------------------------------------------------------------