Software for backups

Thu Oct 23 16:19:02 PDT 2003

Quoting Alvin Oga (alvin at Mail.Linux-Consulting.com):
> On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Chuck Yerkes wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> yes, it'd be better to do backups w/ user's knowing/doing anything
> but that just makes the backup-admin's job painful
> 	you either have to get veritas/legato/etc ...
> 	or you do your own versions and hope you pick up all
> 	the files the users created/installed

And have job security forever....

> and if you like the [fast] veritas style network backups ...
>  - you can also check into inode-based incremental backups
Windows doesn't have inodes...

> > I've had tons of problems with a "shared folder."  Laptops come
> > with 60GB drives.  100 laptops won't backup well through that.
> 
> 100 laptops x 60GB each is 6TB of data
> 	- i'm fairly certain you are not blindly backing up
> 	100 laptops without some "backup rules" being applied
> 	that they dont know about
When you leave it to the users, you don't know that re: shared folders.

> john> I'd add to that list .jpgs, .gifs, .exes, .dlls, unless you are
> john> running a graphics shop or developing Windows applications.
> 
> you cannot just exclude *.exe and *.dll as they might need those
> "user installed files" to run their apps and view their data

Eh, if the users are installing their own apps, then you have other
issues there as well.

Common are policies that say "if your machine eats it, we will
recover it to our standard build with your data and settings."

> - all user installed/downloaded files belong in 
>  my-documents/download or something so you can go find it

Except when an app puts them elsewhere.
Users don't want to run computers.  They have their box that
runs spreadsheets or gets their sales data or what not.
*We* want to run computers.  When they have a nail to put in,
they want a hammer.  It's simply a tool and making them learn about
alloys used to make hammers and the history of hammers is useless
to them.

> if you want to backup windoze boxes w/o user intervention/knowledge
> 
> linux#  mount  windoze:\\C  /mnt/windoze1
> 	( forgot the exact syntax/options )

Bad call:
Ooops, they closed it.  Now your unix box is hung.
Oh, and they're whole harddrive is exported to the world.
Don't treat Windows boxes like Unix boxes and you're head
will have fewer bruises from the wall.

> 
> linux#  find /mnt/windoze1 -mtime -7(days) -print |  \
> 	tar zxcf todaysdate.tgz -T -

mtime huh?  NTFS supports that well?

...
> 	now you have their windoze backups.. guaranteed
> 	( done .. just saved the company $1M from buying veritas
Wow, you spend a lot for that.  $10k/user it would seem.  I just
was involved in spending about what we pay 1 person for a big roomful
of servers.  And it's more than saving one person's efforts.

Find me the tape that has sharon's data before last week and has
this file on it.

> ( done... just saved the company from buying 6TB of backups
> ( for the 100 laptops w/ 60GB each
No, you just bought a lot of disk.  100TB at the least.
I don't need ONE backup.  I need them every month.  I need to be
able to reproduce a laptop as it was in July.  For 2 years.

Work makes me use a Windows box.  It's ONLY purpose is to read the
5 notes messages/day I get.  The rest of my work is on a real machine.
Every couple days, I open the laptop and a window says: "You've missed
a scheduled backup, trying in [5] minutes" unless you hit cancel.

The disk whirs and the machine slows to a crawl and then it stops
doing that.  ANd my data is backed up I assume (and since I work
with the folks who drive 12 tape robots around, I actually KNOW its
backed up).

Rolling your own for cross platform backups might save you several
thousand dollars.  Perhaps enough to cover the productivity lost
when 2 or 3 people don't have their data for a couple days.

I love dump (tar for Linux with no dump) and AMANDA and spool disks
to my tapes for Unix.  Since you're already spending several thousand
dollars per machine to run Windows (OS cost + software cost + support
people (1 person per 15 users overall?), don't cheap out on backups.