Using Time Machine to backup a production file server

Does anyone have any recommendations for using Time Machine to back up a production file server? Right now we have an Xserve G5 with two internal 750GB drives in a RAID1 as our main file share to about 25 users, and a large external FW800 Guardian MAXimus drive to hold our backups. Our current backup system is a custom-written version of Mike Rubel's backup system -- http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ -- incremental backups done with rsync and cp with hardlinks exec'd via crontab, which seems to be very similar to what Time Machine does. Unfortunately, I've been finding it difficult to find any tech specs on Time Machine as far as:
* CPU and IO priority - This is a production file server, so I'd prefer to keep this from sucking power performance from the users. Just how much CPU, and more importantly IO, should I expect it to eat?
* How often it does a backup - The best answer I've found is "always", but I wanted to know if there was a more concrete response for this. Does the system hook into the kernel to see whenever a file gets written out so it doesn't have to continually scan the entire drive?
* Command line restoration - Are there any good utilities for recovering via SSH, or am I going to have to VNC to the server and do the BS magic flying screen just to restore a file?
Message was edited by: Gabetax

For mine I have 3x500GB drives in the server, two are RAID mirror and the third is time machine backup. I just turned on time machine in system preferences and set the backup drive, and after an hour it made the first backup.
Seems to work perfectly although I have heard a couple of rumours that the mail server causes the backup to grow forever, but havnt checked this. Im staging another machine, so perhaps will try this to make sure!
I am expecting the backup will only be useful to a system administrator, and am not sure how a user logged into a shared directory account (i.e 'roaming profile') would access the backup, and somehow suspect they wont be able to just seamlessly use the slick interface as if the backup were their own.
On a 2x2Ghz G5 it didnt seem to use the full load on either the CPU or the disk the first time it was run (copied at about 9MB/sec throughout). The incremental backups are very fast, and are often completed before I realise they have started. I gather it uses Apple's own spotlight API to find changed files, so isnt like an rsync which scans entire volumes. Worth checking the exclusion filters though, no point backing up any large cache/log files you may be storing.
James

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