Software for backups

Wed Oct 22 20:45:10 PDT 2003

At my workplace, one of the things I need to implement is backups (and
demonstrate an ability to perform restores).  I'm somewhat familiar
with the general issues -- it's something I've dealt with since about
1988.  And I have a copy of W. Curtis Preston's _Unix Backup and
Recovery_, and I have started reading it.  :-}

The environment is mostly FreeBSD (which agrees with me Just Fine),
with (a possibility of) some Solaris (which I can cope with OK),
and my boss tells me that there is also a requirement to back up
data that have been placed on Microsoft-based machines.

If it weren't for that last, I'd implement AMANDA and be done with it.
However, I have not seen much evidence that there is a feasible way
to cause a Microsoft-based machine to act as an AMANDA client; further,
I have no way to evaluate how well software that is alleged to cause or
allow such a machine to be backed up works (in any sense of the term).
(Apparently the Microsoft environments have something called a "SHARE,"
by which some other machine -- possibly a non-Microsoft one -- can
obtain access to the data.  My boss tells me that using such an approach
for this task is not acceptable.)

My boss has already acquired the hardware to be used (an 8-slot, re-badged
Breece Hill AIT3 autoloader).

As for software that I've started to evaluate (and comments):

* AMANDA
  As alluded to above, I started implementing AMANDA just so I'd have
  something fairly familiar that would drive the hardware and demonstrate
  that things basically worked.  (Well, I needed to hack
  /usr/src/sys/cam/scsi/scsi_ch.c; it seems that the firmware on the
  autoloader underestimates the size of the buffer needed to hold the
  result of a status inquiry.  [My thanks to Ken Merry for guiding me
  toward a circumvention for the problem, though he is not in any way
  responsible for the gross hack I committed to make it "work".])

  And, as mentioned abovem, I know of no Microsoft-based client for
  AMANDA.

* Arkeia
  My boss thought this was interesting; they claim to have client
  software for a wide variety of environments.  Unfortunately, their
  selection for server software is rather more limited:  of the 3
  environments listed, I would be willing to consider using either
  FreeBSD or Solaris for the server.  And we happened to have a couple
  of Ultra 5s that were pathologically underutilized, so I did a fresh
  install of Solaris 9 on one of them and tried it out.  Despite several
  "boot -r" incantations, I never was able to get Solaris to even
  recognize the existence of the tape drive, let alone the autoloader.

  So I loaded FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE on the other U5.  I'm managing to not
  recall the mode of failure for this case, but it didn't work.

  I then thought I'd give Arkeia one more chance:  by running the Linux
  version of the server under FreeBSD (in Linux emulation).
  Unfortunately, that generated messages about unimplemented ioctls; I
  wasn't willing to try my hand at implementing them at this stage.

* NetVault (BakBone)
  These folks claim to have both client and server software for FreeBSD,
  Microsoft, and Solaris.  I have been working with it for a few days;
  we had some issues with making it work across subnet boundaries
  (because of bi-directional packet-filtering that we do), and until
  today, the only mechanism I knew of for setting the port ranges to be
  used (for UNIX systems) was their X-based GUI.  That's (more or less)
  OK for machines that have X, but not all of our intended client boxes
  have X at all.  We found today that there is a curses-based tool with
  equivalent functionality.

  (Yes, of course I would prefer a configuration file, so I could copy
  it from machine to machine, and maintain a central repository of them
  in CVS.  One battle at a time....)

So: Anyone have experiences that incline them to be willing and able to
offer suggestions for this?  Are there products I'm overlooking?  Ways to
get one of the above to be more (nearly) tractable for the stated
environment?

Naturally, I'll summarize responses sent to me.

Thanks!

Peace,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
If you want true virus-protection for your PC, install a non-Microsoft OS
on it.  Plausible candidates include FreeBSD, Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and
Solaris (in alphabetical order).