[lug] backups - woring on easing the pain

[Ferdinand P. Schmid]

HI,
Over the recent past some of us wrote about backup questions, problems,
recommendations for software, ...  I just completed days of researching
and testing backup software for Linux.  As a burned user of Seagate
BackupExec for WinNT (now owned by Veritas but under Seagate it never
worked right) I wanted a reliable Linux implementation for a backup that
is easy to use and administer.

Hardware:
A tummy.com server (P-II 400, 128 MB) with 108 GB of disk space and a
dds4 tape drive.  It runs software RAID 0 and as of recently we use KRUD
6.1.

Objective:
Reliable and efficient backups with fast restores.  Plus I would like to
be able to go on vacation without having to teach people UNIX commands
here.

The long sought answer to my problems:
Backup Professional by http://www.unitrends.com/ (around @600)

(The second runner up would be loneTar by http://www.lone-tar.com/
(around $200).  I hear that loneTar is used to back up reservation
systems at the Marriott chain, blockbuster, ... but it lacks some
features that I really needed)

Backup Professional doesn't have the clean GUI that you can find in the
free kdat software (KDE backup tool).  But for many reasons kde is not a
viable backup tool for a corporate backup (mostly because it lacks a
scheduler and some other useful features.

Here are some key features of BP:

- Writes backups that any version of tar can read!

- Easy to use GUI so I can go on vacation and have a UNIX illiterate Win
user be able to do restores

- Text user interface so I can access the system remotely without having
to learn infrequently used commands.  Also very useful to check the
backup status...

- Command line interface

- Excellent tech support

- QFS (quick file access) using dds tape indexing under Linux

- database with all tape info for fast restores (you pick the files with
a nice X interface and it tells you which tapes it needs)

- Backs up Win clients for fast crash recovery (all you need is $50 per
client, a floppy disk for the client and a tape).  Anybody who has
windows users who mess with their system a lot will appreciate this very
much!

- All windows backups happen with straight TCP/IP and without Samba or
NFS..., which allows for easy and reliable backups.  Mounting several
samba shares before backing up win clients is a pain!

- Starting the end of this week they will support long file names (up to
400 chars).  Currently I use a patch for this support.

Drawback:
Works well with a patched KRUD 6.1 but not with stock RH 6.1.  RedHat
changed the bash implementation and SCSI library last minute and their
release couldn't respond to yet.  They will support 6.2 and they do
support 6.0 and 5.x.  I am running on KRUD 6.1 and it works fine after
downgrading bash.

There are countless additional benefits to this bp.  I will keep you
posted on my experience with bp over the next months.

Especially Kevin at tummy.com knows how desperate I got for a good
backup system.  Finally I found a solution that seems to work well for
this company and we didn't need to write it ourselves.

Cheers,
Ferdinand
--
Ferdinand Schmid
(Staff Engineer)

Architectural Energy Corporation
http://www.archenergy.com
2540 Frontier Avenue, Suite 201
Boulder, CO 80301
Phone: (303) 444-4149
Fax: (303) 444-4304
e-mail: mailto:fschmid at archenergy.com