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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