> I have machines on my network which are mix of windows and unix machines.
> Right now, I'm managing backups (both full and incremental) through perl
> scripts written by me. They have been working fine for quite some time now
> but are due for upgrade. I was planning to rewrite those scripts to make it
> more effecient.
I know the feeling, though in my case, I inherited some seriously kludgey,
'bass-ackwards' scripts written for our tape changer many -years- before I
took over as network admin... ;)
> Recently somebody suggested me to take a look at amanda. I looks really neat
> and cool to me. I have some doubts though (if it will work in my kind of
> setup) I will try to explain about my setup below:
>
> I have couple of linux servers and windows servers. I have indentified what
> shares on those servers which needs to be backed up. I will be needing one
> FULL backup for linux servers and another FULL for windows per week and I
> should also be able to run daily incremental backups for both windows and
> linux machines. FULL backups usually run into 15 GB and incremental close to
> 500 to 1 GB. Right now, I do some backups in the night and some in the
> mornings (data is first written to some temp space where I pick it in the
> mornings to write to the tape)
To be honest, I would recommend you also take a look at Arkeia
(http://www.arkeia.com). Arkeia Light is a free version of Arkeia (and
legal for corporate use), though it is limited to a configuration of one
server and two 'clients' (which can be worked around with 'creative cron
jobbing,' in theory... ;) ). I find Amanda to be great for backup of our
desktop shares on our autoloader (where storage/tape ratio is most
important), but I prefer Arkeia for the server backups (where knowing the
backup schedule and status any given day is more important than how much I
can shoe-horn onto each tape).
One of the main advantages of Arkeia (as compared to Amanda, for the
setup you describe), is the way it handles different backup 'levels' and
tape pools. For example, my current configuration: Lv. 1 is an 'every
4-weeks' backup for a set of 'monthly' tapes for rotation to off-site
storage, Lv. 2 is a weekly (every Fri. except for when 'monthly' tapes
run) full backup, and Lv. 3 is a daily backup of files that have been
modified since the last full weekly. We have 16 daily tapes (4 tapes/week
(Mon. - Thurs.) * 4 weeks), 3 weekly tapes (for Fri. of the first 3 weeks
in the cycle), and 13 'monthly' tapes (for the fourth week of the cycle,
roughly monthly).
Basically, I find Arkeia's configuration scheme to be great for setting up
more 'calendar-reliant' schedules, and the GUI they provide is a good tool
for configuration (and I'm a vi fan at heart ;) ).
Certainly no offense intended towards Amanda fans/users/maintainers (my
Sony TSL-9000 would be wasted without Amanda), but I try to call 'em as I
see 'em, 'best tool for the job' and all that rot...
---
Daniel Bentley - Network Administrator, QSI Corporation (www.qsicorp.com)
chown -R us *base*
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