Hello all.
I have been running Amanda now for about a month and a half now and I don't
think this is going to work well for me in my environment. Here are some
problems that I have:
1. Does not handle NT Servers well with smbclient. The biggest problem I
have is the limited ability to exclude files from the backups. I have a
server, ntFileServer, that is running Windows NT Server. There are a ton of
files on the server that are of type mp3, mpeg, avi, etc that I do not want
to backup. Because there is no way for me to build a smart exclude list
that will exclude *.mp3, *.mpg, *.avi etc. So lets say I kill this server
(which I plan to soon) and install in it's place a linux server running
samba and share out all of these directories to users on the network, just
as it is currently, but with a linux server instead. Now the only way to
backup this server, with an exclude list, is to use gnutar. From the
EXCLUDE doc, "The GNU version of tar, (gnutar or gtar), reads its data at a
file system, (or higher), level and does include the option to exclude
specific files and/or directories. It should be mentioned here that tar
will change the access times no files. Tar has the ability to preserve the
access times however, doing so effectively disables incremental backups
since resetting the access time alters the inode change time, which in turn
causes the file to look like it needs to be archived again." So, now this
ads another problem to the mix. I cannot do incremental backups on files
that I decide to backup with gnutar, which I am using to solve my first
problem. This is unacceptable.
If I am understanding this correctly, Amanda has no way to incrementally
backup a disk that also uses a exclude list to prevent it from backing up
certain files. This seams to me to be an important feature included in a
backup package.
2. Not an intuitive way to think about backing things up. This rant is
somewhat related to the above rant. :) The exclude files need to be
written on the client? Again, from the EXCLUDE documentation, "An exclude
list is a file that resides on the CLIENT machine and contains paths to be
excluded, one per line. This file can be in any location on the CLIENT so
long as the same path is specified in the dumptype." Why should it be
necessary for the CLIENT to have this information reside on it. If one
thinks about backups using a CLIENT-SERVER model, I would think it would
only be necessary to have a client piece accept instructions from the server
and do the backups based on those instructions. The server should contain
information necessary to backup all clients connected to the system. Not
some client specific information on the server and other client information
on the client.
Perhaps I am just not "getting" the backup paradigm utilized by Amanda. Can
you clear some of this up for me? Or am I dead on and should perhaps go
shopping for a backup solution that would better fit my environment?
Amanda also has a lack of support for other areas that I need to have a
backup solution for. I currently have in my environment 5 NT servers, 1
runs Exchange 5.5 and one that runs MSSQL Server 2000. I am able to run a
backup job in MSSQL that dumps the database to a file and I have amanda
backup that file. It works fine, but for the Exchange server I am left to
backup using BackupExec. :( I touched on this on a post I made yesterday,
sort of, when I asked about a native client for MS products using the Backup
API. Are these API's free to link to? That is, could one write software
using gnu compilers to use these libraries and write a robust interface to
backup Microsoft products like Exchange, MSSQL, the registry, file system,
etc? Has this road every been crossed? How do other backup solutions
attack this problem?
I love to use free software whenever possible, but in this case it just may
not be possible. I am sure some of this has come up before. What are your
thoughts? Does the Amanda user base even care about these issues? Perhaps
not, Amanda works just GREAT for my Linux servers, but does not come close
to being a viable solution for my other clients. If Amanda only seeks to be
a great xNIX solution, it is doing a great job. But for the rest of us in
more mixed environments, it just doesn't make the grade. Are there other
backup solutions out there that are free software that might better address
my needs? Or am I to look at a commercial solution like Arkeia, BackupExec,
or ArcServe? Any thoughts on these products and which ones are best?
There is a lot here and I am sorry for not being more focused, but I need to
make a decision at this point on where I want to go with my backups. I am a
one man show and do not have much time to be futzing with backups all the
time. It's time to fish or cut bait with Amanda...
Michael
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