[Novalug] Amanda users?

[Kurt Yoder]

On Apr 12, 2007, at 10:41 AM, Ben Creitz wrote:

> All, I am working on a backup solution involving multiple hosts (all
> Solaris/SPARC now, will be all Linux/x86 eventually).  Basically I
> have a workstation + SDLT drive that will act as a backup "master",
> and < 20 other hosts from which I will grab various files for backup.
> It looks like a home-grown script would be feasible now, but would
> quickly get out of hand.  So I am considering Amanda.  Just wanted to
> take a quick survey on thoughts from people who use Amanda, or from
> those of you use something similar.  Thanks!

I used amanda for a while at two different workplaces. I found  
restores to be rather cumbersome, plus there were the usual tape and  
hardware complications. My current philosophy is to back up using  
hard drives and rdiff-backup. Restores are easy, and there is no  
question about whether I will be able to restore off my media. Hard  
drives are much cheaper per-megabyte than tape nowadays. Get 10  
external large hard disks and you will effectively have the same  
setup as 10 tapes + 1 drive, and probably much greater capacity.

Also, using rdiff-backup removes the need to do periodic level-0's,  
which was a problem with amanda over slow internet links.

--

Kurt Yoder
http://yoderhome.com