Software for backups

Thu Oct 23 11:35:20 PDT 2003

Quoting David Wolfskill (david at catwhisker.org):
> 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.  :-}

I'd say your into the commercial realm.  Despite alvin's stream of
conciousness ramblings, windows stuffs information into many many
places (registries and the like).

You *do not* want to require the users to have to take active
actions to be safe.  Your job is to make it so their tool (windows)
works.  Training them all to run be experts about their OS annoys
them and (more often) just fails.

I've had tons of problems with a "shared folder."  Laptops come
with 60GB drives.  100 laptops won't backup well through that.

Vertitas netbackup is a fine tool from a cross platform vendor.

We have stuff that removes certain files before going to a large
HSM system (bigger system than you want).  So we don't backup
mp3 files and certain other types of files.  It costs too much
to keep them and there may be liability.

RE: the ORA book.
I'm really not in love with it.  ORA has tended to be TOO thorough.
Rather than best practice, they take an expert and make him document
EVERY practice/product.  Which means that immediately a majority of
the book is useless.  WEre they not so complex in themselves, I'd
imaging "Unix SMTP mail" would have sections on 
qmail/postfix/sendmail/exim and the commercial ones (sendmail/stalker,etc).

Immediately only 1 of those sections is relevant leaving the others
as treekillers.

The printing books and backup book tend towards that.