On 2/18/2011 6:05 AM, Alan Brown wrote: > On 18/02/11 03:08, Randy Katz wrote: >> Hi, >> >> This is clearly off topic so flame away if need be! > It's not off topic at all. > > There have been a number of discussions and approaches to trying to keep > clients backed up, especially laptops. > > Backuppc works, but backing the resulting fileserver tree up to tape is > problematic as it's constantly updating files (mtime or hardlink counts) > which otherwise wouldn't need to be hit. > > A coherent approach to this issue is really needed. It's been on my mind > for some time as I have a large stack of windows desktops and laptops > which need attention - especially laptops as they get dropped or stolen > far more often than any other kind of machine.
I deal with Windows and Mac laptops. Some users are out of country for weeks. Some do quite a bit of work from a home office. The key is letting go of the idea that you can backup these machines as you would a server or even local LAN workstation. It just is not possible. I currently use a two-factor backup strategy for these machines, along with user policy/education. The latter is the difficult part, though most of "my" users hold PhDs. -- Factor 1 -- Run daily incrementals and weekly virtual fulls. The incrementals fail often due to the laptop being unavailable. The virtual fulls perpetuate a full backup that can be used to restore a broken, lost, or stolen laptop to at least some reasonably usable state. When available and time permits, I run a manual full. -- Factor 2 -- Provide users with network shares where they should keep their critical files. These of course get backed up with the file server. Access to the network shares is via VPN. Users can either copy files to their laptop or work directly with the file on the share, depending on connectivity, but they realize that the "safe" copy is always the one on the network share. This has worked out fairly well. The users are happy not to have to rely so much on the files on their laptop. I am less worried about data loss. Basically, I feel that the best way to deal with laptops is to treat them, as far as possible, as dumb terminals that are likely to break or go missing at any moment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The ultimate all-in-one performance toolkit: Intel(R) Parallel Studio XE: Pinpoint memory and threading errors before they happen. Find and fix more than 250 security defects in the development cycle. Locate bottlenecks in serial and parallel code that limit performance. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devfeb _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
