Backup software: backuppc.

Ken D'Ambrosio ken at flyingtoasters.net
Fri Apr 16 16:05:01 EDT 2004


Hello, all.  As disk prices continue to drop, some folks are finding 
that backup-to-RAID is a fast, price-effective method to backup.  My 
boss and I decided to give it a spin [pun not intended], but didn't know 
which software to use.  For our *nix servers, we used Amanda, but for 
the PCs, my boss bumped into BackupPC 
(http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/).  Truth be told, the name is an 
unfortunate misnomer, because it can back up most anything.  Here are 
some of the features:

- Backs up via SMB, NFS, rsync, etc.  I use rsync, and it rocks.
- Allows for LDAP authentication, which permits end users to restore 
their own files.
- "Pools" identical files (verified via checksum) with hard links, so 
that our
  60-odd W2K computers don't comprise 60-odd copies of c:\winnt.
- Has all sorts of smarts -- with both good default values, but also the 
ability to
  tweak.  An example of this is that, if a machine has been up 
consistantly for
  seven days, it will default it to nightly backups.
- Does full and incrementals.
- Has a web-based front-end that's really, really good.
- Restores can be accomplished via many different methods, including 
restoring via
  the protocol that the backup was done with, and downloading a .zip or 
.tar of the
  file(s) or director(ies|y) in  question.  The interface is very, very 
usable.
- Nag e-mails for systems that haven't backed up in N days.
- Global and per-client configs.  [For simplicity's sake, I have 
individual config
  files for my PCs that get auto-created on login to the domain; that 
way, if (say)
  a hard drive gets added, I automatically re-configure to back it up.]

The documentation is a little rough, but the application, once 
installed, is just a joy to use.  Backing up your disk-based backups are 
also not that well discussed, but it appears that (as per the damn info 
page and empirical data) GNU TAR supports hard links, so I'm just going 
to tar it to tape.  Lastly, between the pooling and compression, we have 
almost 70 PCs (Windows 2000, '98 and Linux) backing up about 900 GB of 
data into 200 GB of disk.

No, I don't get kickbacks for writing this, but really good software 
deserves to be given free press, so here it is.  Again, the install -- 
or, rather, the directions for the install -- are a bit rough, but it's 
worth the effort if this is a manner of backup that you might be 
considering.  I'll be glad to share any of my config stuff with anyone 
who's interested.

$.02,

-Ken



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