Hi Mike,
Generally, if you can't justify it yourself I'm wondering why you're
using Amanda.
But anyway, here's something that may be worth mentioning: business
continuity.
The backups will be used in the event that something catastrophic has
happened. Let's say that the building has burned down and the guy that
did the backup scripts is away on business/holiday.
With amanda, all you have to do is get some machines up and running and
restore from your offsite backup (you are taking a backup offsite,
aren't you? - quick note: don't completely trust fire safes) using an
easily obtainable backup package. After this kind of critical failure
amanda needs a single restore operation (assuming a full backup on one
media) and everything ends up hunky-dory as fast as the tape
drive/network can work. It can't be up and running any faster than
this.
With the hand-rolled scripts it could easily take someone a few days to
figure out where everything should be going, or for the guy to wrote
them to get back/talk someone through it over the phone. The company is
going to lose money already from the original disaster, but it would
lose even more if people can't carry on working as soon as possible.
I'm currently using "hand-rolled" scripts here on my Windows servers,
but that's because I don't want a restore from tape to end up broken by
some kind of star/linux/smb/ntfs complication. Once ntbackup has backed
up to a single bkf file (including NTFS permissions and the like),
Amanda is free to back it up to tape. It adds an extra level of
complication, but ntbackup stores the original location in the bkf file
which makes it simple for someone else to restore.
However, the customer is still the customer and if they decide they
aren't happy with amanda, or more importantly that they don't trust it,
you might find that you have to go against your gut feeling and do what
they want.
It would still be worth pointing out what a huge security risk the rcp
command is, and if they insist on using their scripts at least get them
to remove the r* accounts setup stuff and use something like rsync over
an encrypted channel (why bother protecting the file on the disk if
you're going to potentially transfer it in plain text over the network).
One other thing. If you have space on the backup media and enough time
to do a complete backup every night, why would you want to do anything
other than a full backup?
I hope this helps,
Mark Lidstone
IT and Network Support Administrator
BMT SeaTech Ltd
Grove House, Meridians Cross, 7 Ocean Way
Ocean Village, Southampton. SO14 3TJ. UK
Tel: +44 (0)23 8063 5122
Fax: +44 (0)23 8063 5144
E-Mail: mailto:mark.lidstone AT bmtseatech.co DOT uk
Website: www.bmtseatech.co.uk
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-----Original Message-----
From: owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
[mailto:owner-amanda-users AT amanda DOT org] On Behalf Of Mike
Sent: 20 April 2005 19:05
To: amanda-users AT amanda DOT org
Subject: Amanda vs Homegrown
Well, I have spent a few days converting a client from a bunch of hand
rolled scripts that rcp files all over the place, to amanda. All the
while saying that this will be better, this is good, this is how it
should work. Of course I couldn't complete it in a day, and there were
issues of configuration. So now that I am mostly complete and am ready
to put this project away.....
The client comes in today and says "this is taking entirely too long (to
get working), and I want a single piece of media with a full backup of
everything and my scripts were working just fine"..
To which I say, Uhhh, I mean I was dumbfounded, stopped in my tracks by
such a ludicrous statement. So.....
Does anyone have some good business case stuff or other verbage of a
paragraph or three that I can use to convince this person that an actual
backup program is better in all ways than hand rolled scripts, and that
a full backup on a single piece of media may look attractive, but
actually is not???
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