On Sat, Apr 09, 2005 at 03:24:35PM -0800, jonr wrote:
> 3 questions.
> 
> 1. Can Amanda backup Windows servers and client OSes that have 
> encryption or compression on the drive?
> 
> 2. Can it back up dynamic disks or just basic disks?
> 
> 3. How about M$ exchange server 2003 and all mailboxes?
> 
> I have been looking through the archives but am not having much luck but 
> that is probably a personal problem. :)
> 
> Any help is appreciated,


The first thing to understand is that amanda is NOT a backup program.

SURPRISE!

Actually amanda is a backup manager, managing backups made by other programs.
Currently these programs use the syntax of the unix dump or tar programs.

To extend the backup capability to windows several schemes may be used, none
fully satisfactory to everyone.

 - remote mount the windows shares or directories onto a unix host and backup
   the mount like it was a unix directory.

 - use Samba's 'smbtar' program to do a tar-like backup of a windows share

 - use some standard windows backup program and output the result to a file(s)
   and then use some scheme to include the windows backup output onto an amanda
   tape.

The last scheme introduces an entire second layer of backup administration, both
amanda and the windows backups.  The first two suffer from problems like loss of
some ACL type info on files copied remotely and the inability of users to copy
certain files (those currently opened by applications, the registry, ...).

Amanda should probably not be considered for the backup of a windows 
environment.
Instead, given a unix environment with an amanda backup system, it can be used
to add one or three windows systems to the schedule.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
 4455 Province Line Road        (609) 252-0159
 Princeton, NJ  08540-4322      (609) 683-7220 (fax)