Computer Associates International's (CA's) BrightStor Enterprise Backup 10.51, Hewlett-Packard's (HP's) OpenView Data Protector 5.1, VERITAS Software's Net Backup Enterprise Server 5.0, CommValut Systems Galaxy, BakBone Software NetVault 7.0, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 5.2.2, and Legato Systems NetWorker 7.1 are reviewed tape backup systems. BrightStor, the editors' choice, is the best value, while NetVault gets the highest marks for reporting. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager and NetBackup Enterprise excel for hardware and operating system (OS) support, while NetBackup gets the highest marks for management and configuration. Testers worked on various hardware and OS environments to test the mixed-platform tape backup packages. A 2U Dell 2650 with 1GB memory and two 2.4GHz Pentium 4 Xeon processors were used, with seven hard disk (each a 36GB, 15,000 RPM Seagate model loaded with Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition). Each disk was loaded onto the machine for testing of one specific software package. The tape system was a Quantum M1500 with two DLT8000 drives and SCSI-connectivity to the Dell 2650 through an Adaptec 29160 SCSI card. Agents were deployed to Oracle, Microsoft Exchange, Windows 2000 ADS, and general Windows 2000 file servers. BrightStor supports Microsoft's VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) on Windows 2003 Server. It provides bare-metal restore for Windows and Solaris.