[Novalug] Amanda users?

[Kurt Yoder]

On Apr 13, 2007, at 9:00 AM, Mark Smith wrote:

> amanda can write to disk w/o the usage of a changer (which can be
> an expensive unit).  a decent strategy (given cheap disk prices)
> would be to do a couple of level-0 backups so you have some snapshots
> of each day.
>

I simply can't keep quiet here. Rdiff-backup! Really! It will help!  
Since it only stores incremental changes, it saves bandwidth, and  
allows you to store a very large number of increments with very  
little disk space. If you are thinking of backing up to disk drives,  
I would highly recommend rdiff-backup instead of amanda. I've tried  
both routes, and rdiff-backup was much easier to set up and restore  
from. Of course, if you must use tape drives then yes I would  
recommend amanda.

I'm so enthused about this tool that I'd even be willing to do a talk  
about it to whoever wants to listen.

> rsync does a good job for backups, but it doesn't protect for all
> cases.  if someone deletes a file, that deletion, unless detected
> soon, gets deleted in the backup stream too.
>

Rdiff-backup will store incrementals, so you can easily go back to  
the day *before* the user deleted the file. Since there's no tape  
switching, the restore usually takes under one minute.

> raid is also another consideration.  some raid systems give you
> automatic backups of deleted files which is real cool too.
>

I second that. RAID is a must for any production-level server. Of  
course, if you're clustering RAID is probably overkill.



--

Kurt Yoder
http://yoderhome.com