On Thu, 2003-03-20 at 14:54, Dave Sherohman wrote: > On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 01:04:08PM -0800, Alvin Oga wrote:
> > i dont have time to play with tapes.. daily changing it.. > > - forget one day... and you're hosed > > Haven't used amanda, have you? Just set yourself up with a > decent-sized holding disk and it's not a problem. (Your backups will > finish fast, too.) My amanda server at work can easily run a week's > worth of backups without needing a tape, just saving it all up on the > holding disk. Just be sure the holding disk is a separate physical > device to minimize the chance of losing it if the system's primary > drive fails. That's the way I use it - flush the backups to tape every Saturday morning. Downside is that you can lose a week's data is/when the holding disk dies. > > i prefer 100GB - 1TB of disks to be backed up to other disks ... > > ( tapes are too small for "full backups" and definitely too slow ) > > > > - i want the backup to be live within a few minutes > > of the main server going down for whatever reason > Yup. Different philosophy. If you want fast, random access to the backed up data, tape is definitely not the medium of choice. If you want to use the backup only for restores, disks are way too expensive. One of the major benefits of amanda is that backed up data are stored in a "well known" format (GNU tar or cpio - your choice). So in case of major disaster, you don't even need the amanda software for a bare metal recovery; a floppy with a tape driver and tar/cpio is enough. So I'm told - haven't been there (yet). Another cool solution, in some situations, is rsync. I've set up rsync to use an ssh connection to sync files over the Internet. The first time, rsync will copy the entire file. After that it copies only the differences - takes only a few seconds to maintain an offsite copy of the company books, a 4.5MB file. http://www.rsync.org/ http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/tech_report/node2.html > I don't care how (or even if) you back it up. If it's a playpen computer, don't worry about it. If it's for real, I do care. Is the only copy of 10 years of your bank account(s) on your disk? Is the computer a server with lots of fine-tuned config files? *Please* back up, and do a good job of it. My heart sinks when I have to tell somebody they've just lost vast quantities of data, and there's nothing to be done about it except maybe to go through years of bank statements and re-enter it all by hand. -- Glenn English [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
