Software for backups

Thu Oct 23 13:01:04 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.  :-}
[snip]
>
> Vertitas netbackup is a fine tool from a cross platform vendor.

I have heard, but haven't seen, that Veritas for UNIX will allow users to
restore their own files.

On Veritas Netbackup server for Windows, the backup catalog can become
corrupted if you shut down the server.  That results in a loss of the most
recent backup.  The problem is that the services need to be shut down
before OS shutdown (I expect that data has to be flushed to the disk). 
After a couple of minutes, the server can be shut down.  This occurs under
the 3.5 server branch.  Version 3.6 may be more stable.

On the client side, you can lock down the client so people can't change
some or all options.  For example, you can lock the exclude/include list
and have people put their files in My Documents, but still allow them to
cancel backups for those times when they are on a dial-up link.

And the client backs up and restores registries.

I had to replace a user's hard drive recently, and the data restoration
was painless (it helped to have OS images).  The backup server dumped data
and the registry to the new system (same shell, different hard drive), and
all I had to do was clean out a couple of short cuts that no longer
applied.

> 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.

I'd add to that list .jpgs, .gifs, .exes, .dlls, unless you are running a
graphics shop or developing Windows applications.

[snip]

John