Re: [gentoo-server] Backup Software

[Bryn Hughes]

I'm actually looking very closely at Bacula right now.  Looks like it 
can handle Win32 clients AND Mac OS X clients which is a definite 
improvement over Amanda for me.  Amanda can handle Win32 clients btw 
using samba.

The GUI is pretty low on my priority list.  Being able to support Mac 
OS X clients is way more important to me than having a working GUI.

For those of you who haven't seen Bacula before here's a quick rundown 
of what I've found out so far:

- Uses a MySQL database to record backup statistics, indexes, etc
- Can back up Unix/Linux/Windows/Mac clients over a network
- Can append to tapes and span multiple tapes
- Works with most tape devices
- Can back up to file or to tape
- Uses a modular configuration system which seems much better than 
Amanda's
- Doesn't require xinetd/inetd (yay!)

The bacula home page is here:
http://www.bacula.org

Bacula seems to be much more flexible than Amanda.  Barring any 
insights from the list before I get home I'm going to set it up using a 
spare DLT drive tonight and see how things go.

Bryn

On Mar 22, 2004, at 10:47 AM, Tobias Orlamuende wrote:
> Hi,
>
> have you had a look at bacula (bacula.org).
> I am playing around with it at the moment. It's quite heavy to setup
> but if
> it's running it is really useful.
> The biggest advantage (for me) is the fact that it can backup from
> Windows
> (using an agent). AFAIK it is the only OpenSource-tool which can do
> that.
> There might be one disadvantage: The GUI provided is nearly unusable in
> productive environment. Maybe there is coming a new, heavily improved
> one.
> IMHO it's worth to have a look.
>
> Greetings
>
> Tobias
>
> Am Montag, 22. März 2004 18:41 schrieb Bryn Hughes:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm wondering what everyone is using to back up their Gentoo servers.
>> Right now I'm using Amanda which works fairly well but I'm thinking
>> about changing over to something new.
>>
>> My environment:
>> - 2 servers, about 120 gigs total disk space between them
>> - a 75G (native) DLT tape library (Quantum 4500 with 15G tapes)
>>
>> What I like about amanda:
>> - network backup, one server controls everything
>> - point-in-time restore (I can choose to restore a file from last week
>> and it will tell me what tape it needs)
>> - decently reliable after initial setup
>> - intelligent planning of incremental backups automatically
>>
>> What I don't like about amanda:
>> - can't append to the previous day's tape (lots of tapes that only get
>> 15% full or so with incrementals)
>> - large dumps cannot span multiple tapes
>> - handling of above results in amanda spending hours writing to a tape
>> just to start all over again on the next tape when it runs out of
>> space
>> - no GUI
>>
>> I want to find something that uses my tapes more effectively and
>> wastes
>> less time than amanda.  What I don't want to loose is the indexing
>> functions and the ability to backup both my servers (and as many more
>> as I add in the future) without having to actually mount the
>> partitions
>> to be backed up to the backup server.
>>
>> Anyone have any thoughts?  I've been poking around and I've found BURT
>> but that doesn't seem to have any activity since 1999 or so.  Bacula
>> looks promising also (in fact right now it seems to be the closest to
>> what I'm looking for).  Anyone have any experience?
>>
>> Bryn