Sure they can back up easily, but can they restore?<br><br>I removed a gazillion backup apps from windows systems because when it was time, the restore was unsuitable for use.<br><br>Bacula is a beast but it is rock solid, supports loads of tape hardware (libraries with LTO3, clusters, etc) and can backup and restore Linux, windows, Mac, Solaris, anything. The winders crowd has a gui client tool to let them see what has been done. There is a bare-iron recovery method (saved my A$$ a few times!) as well as the ability to backup over ssl encrypted connection and even encrypt files BEFORE backup so backup operators have no access to data. Backups can be timed or client initiated. The manual is totally outstanding (there is nothing like it anywhere else in open source land!) and is updated and released with each version release. It is really enterprise class stuff yet once the setup is done, it's sit back and watch the email reports for problems (Yes. It's sends a detailed report for the success or failure of each backup and restore job. Example below).<br>
<br>Amanda is a popular tool that can also do multiple platforms. It defaults to a local drive storage and does not require a tape system (bacula can do that as well).<br><br>There are many tools like Mondo and Mindi and a bazillion others. Freshmeat lists 334 projects in system::archiving::backup (most are crap :( <br>
<br>Example email from a successful Bacula run (note: there is pre-run script that the backup calls to do a full pgdump call):<br><br><tt>25-May 00:27 test-dir: Start Backup JobId 3194, Job=BackupCatalog.2008-05-24_23.10.00</tt><br>
<tt>25-May 00:28 test-dir: Bacula 1.38.3 (04Jan06): 25-May-2008 00:28:18</tt><br>
<tt> JobId: 3194</tt><br>
<tt> Job: BackupCatalog.2008-05-24_23.10.00</tt><br>
<tt> Backup Level: Full</tt><br>
<tt> Client: "database" i686-redhat-linux-gnu,redhat,(Heidelberg)</tt><br>
<tt> FileSet: "Catalog" 2006-01-12 23:10:02</tt><br>
<tt> Pool: "Default"</tt><br>
<tt> Storage: "PacketLoader"</tt><br>
<tt> Scheduled time: 24-May-2008 23:10:00</tt><br>
<tt> Start time: 25-May-2008 00:12:13</tt><br>
<tt> End time: 25-May-2008 00:28:18</tt><br>
<tt> Priority: 11</tt><br>
<tt> FD Files Written: 1</tt><br>
<tt> SD Files Written: 1</tt><br>
<tt> FD Bytes Written: 192,544,215</tt><br>
<tt> SD Bytes Written: 192,544,324</tt><br>
<tt> Rate: 199.5 KB/s</tt><br>
<tt> Software Compression: None</tt><br>
<tt> Volume name(s): LNS01005</tt><br>
<tt> Volume Session Id: 395</tt><br>
<tt> Volume Session Time: 1204898758</tt><br>
<tt> Last Volume Bytes: 73,924,152,958</tt><br>
<tt> Non-fatal FD errors: 0</tt><br>
<tt> SD Errors: 0</tt><br>
<tt> FD termination status: OK</tt><br>
<tt> SD termination status: OK</tt><br>
<tt> Termination: Backup OK</tt><br>
<br>
<tt>25-May 00:28 test-dir: Begin pruning Jobs.</tt><br>
<tt>25-May 00:28 test-dir: No Jobs found to prune.</tt><br>
<tt>25-May 00:28 test-dir: Begin pruning Files.</tt><br>
<tt>25-May 00:28 test-dir: No Files found to prune.</tt><br>
<tt>25-May 00:28 test-dir: End auto prune.</tt>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 5:10 PM, Craig Button <<a href="mailto:craigb.rn@gmail.com">craigb.rn@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Ok one area that Windows and even MAC seem to have a heads up over linux<br>
is easy to use backup software. I"ve got a desktop system using Hardy<br>
that I'd like to set for regular backups. I'd like to be able to back<br>
up my Evolution data, my documents of course and the biggy for me is my<br>
Amarok files.<br>
<br>
I'm looking for the best backup solution. Ideally I'd like a solution<br>
that allows me to restore my data easily when I try new distro's.<br>
<br>
Thanks all.<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>-- <br>James P. Kinney III <br>