On Thu, Mar 09, 2006 at 02:43:19PM +0100, Moritz Both wrote:
> 
> Which is the correct way to backup windows servers using amanda? Is 
> there one?
> 
> First of all, I think this must have been discussed a lot of times on 
> the list - probably. Unfortunately, I did not have much luck searching 
> the archives, only random single statements -

And here is another ;(

(note, I'm pretty biased against windows,
so read these comments with that in mind)

Amanda is not a suitable solution, neither for "complete", nor
for "production",  backup of a windows environment.

A major problem is that the only backup tool, smbclient, acts
at the file and directory level in windows like tar does in an
unix environment.  To a reasonalble degree this works in the
unix environment because there is an omnipotent user available
and there are pretty consistant file access capabilities.  In
contrast, neither the admin user, nor the backup operator in
windows is truely omnipotent.  They both run into limitations
while accessing files and directories.  Files opened by an
application can not be backed up, "system" files and dirs are
not accessible, access rights can be specifically denied to
admin and backup user ...

BTW linux users, the new extended permissions capabilities can
be used to deny file/directory access to root :)

Another problem I see with backing up user data in windows is
"where is the user data".  In unix user foo's data is pretty
much under /home/foo.  It seems to this bigot not to be the
case in windows.  Applications like quicken, word, or firefox
or ... may elect to put your data under their C:\Program Files
installation directory.  Or maybe under some "User Application"
directory under \Windows.  Or just maybe in ????

And don't start on the Registry :)

So is amanda totally unsuitable for backing up windows systems?  No.
But it must be used with an understanding of the limitations and
recognition of what you can and what you are actually backing up.

If you have a mostly windows environment, it probably does deserve
its own backup solution.  One that works at lower filesystem
levels and can overcome the higher level restrictions.  I.e. a
backup solution sanctioned by M$.

If you have a unix environment already being backed up by amanda
and need some data backup and recover for a few windows clients
(not system backups, specific data backup) then fine add them to
your amanda disklist.  Make sure to follow those warnings in the
amanda report and see what is not being backed up in case something
changes the access rights of some files or directories.

If you want to backup the entire windows system rather than specific
directories, and are willing to say "I might not get all of it back",
then amanda works for that too.  It is an approach I use in my home
environment.  And when a windows system died, I couldn't get it all
back at the system level.  Couldn't even reinstall apps.  But I did
recover the family photos, financial data, ...  And that was able
to be imported back to the apps, newly installed, on the rebuilt,
from scratch, system.

> 
> Recently, they has a headcrash on a non-mirrored disk and the tapes were 
> needed. As it turned out, all backups of the windows servers were 
> incomplete. smbclient thought 70-80 files per directory must be enough. 
> At backup time, it just went ahead to the next directory, and whenever a 
> directory contained more than this many files, they were simply ignored 
> without any warning or error message.

This is a ludicrous defect if actually present in smbclient.
I say "if" because I've not heard it before and certainly would
expect to were it present.  One hundred plus files in a directory
is hardly an uncommon situation.  I suspect something else is
going on here.

One thing is clear; the amanda administrators at your site were
not following the reports very carefully nor were they trying
periodic recoveries to ensure anything was actually being saved.

Those are policy crimes of which I can also be accused.

-- 
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)