Thanks for the thoughts! << I just don't know that Bacula will quite fit here, because we have travelers on a regular basis overseas, it's not uncommon for some of them to not be in the office for a week or two, back in for a day or part of a day, and then back out again. But it's entirely possible that a set of jobs set up in Bacula with the right retry parameters would be at least as effective as BackupPC for these cases, so I'm not dismissing it. I think that the big reason I'm leaning that way is because of the user interface for restores more than anything. >>
Steve, I know the feeling about having off-site clients not 'plugged' into the network. We are not quite as bad as your company, as our clients are not oversea's. Our clients are in remote sites for a week or so at a time, and jack into the network maybe once every two weeks (It's a royal pain in the butt to get window's updates pushed to clients that never connect). For those users we have actually set up external USB disks (there are so many different brands out there, but the traveldrives work great) on their machines. They have to be reminded (which is a pain in the butt sometimes) to manually back up their data (backup script on their desktop) to the drive every so often. It's not the most ideal situation, but it works with the clients that rarely come in but can't afford to lose their data. I believe Maxtor also has the 'one touch' portable backup drives. You just install the software and it's as simple as reminding the users to plug in the USB drive, and push a button. I keep saying 'reminding' because they really don't pay attention to manually doing a backup until they have lost a hard-drive. But after that, they seem to do great in preaching how important backups are! I know it's not the most ideal solution, but there are times where a centralized backup solution does great, and times where it's just not the best. We actually evaluated the options available to us with remote clients that don't connect, and came to a-few negative thoughts to this (not just bacula, but 6 other backup solutions). *Bandwidth - If they are in a hotel, on a hotel wifi attempting to do a full 10gb backup over the network via vpn to the servers..that will take forever *Accessibility - Just how often are they actually 'online'. Some of our clients get online to get email on their laptop then log off, not enough time to actually get a backup done *'Phone Home' - How often do they actually connect to the work network, and how long do they connect for. Anyway, I ramble on and on. Im actually trying out those options I gave you in an earlier email; for the next 2 weeks on 15 machines on separate department pools. So I should have a better understanding on just how effective those options are with remote laptops :-) ~Jayson The information in this electronic mail message and any attached files is confidential and may be legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, delete this message and contact the sender immediately. Access to this message by anyone other than its intended recipient is unauthorized. You must not use or disseminate this information as it is proprietary property of the True companies. Communications on or through the True companies' computer systems may be monitored or recorded to secure effective system operation and for other lawful purposes. Thank you. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Register Now & Save for Velocity, the Web Performance & Operations Conference from O'Reilly Media. Velocity features a full day of expert-led, hands-on workshops and two days of sessions from industry leaders in dedicated Performance & Operations tracks. Use code vel09scf and Save an extra 15% before 5/3. http://p.sf.net/sfu/velocityconf _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
