Subject: RE: Backup Software Question
From: Chris Herrmann (chris@faredge.com.au)
Date: Mon Jul 30 2001 - 19:27:12 EDT
This is really a YMMV situation - amanda has worked really well for me at
several sites, and been the cause of many "thank god you restored that
file".
Telling me that Retrospect works for you doesn't change the fact that it
didn't work for us. If retrospect works for you, great. use it. amanda works
great for me, requires no attention, keeps me and my clients happy. i use
it.
If someone writes asking for recommendations on backup software, i'm
certainly not about to recommend something i've had bad experiences with.
i've had good experiences with amanda, and so recommended it.
I don't think that getting into a flame war was the point of the initial
request, it was a stab in the dark to find out what kinds of experiences
people out there have had with different backup systems, and not
suprisingly, the result is heterogeneous. it's up to them to decide what's
important for them given their situation / hardware / requirements /et al.
It's up to us, if we so choose, to offer our own experiences so that
hopefully someone else's admin-experience will be less painful.
Cheers all,
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Sak Wathanasin [mailto:sw@network-analysis.ltd.uk]
Sent: Monday, 30 July 2001 18:45
To: netatalk-admins@umich.edu
Subject: RE: Backup Software Question
In reply to Chris Herrmann's message of the 30/07/2001 at 09:06 +1000,
>Retrospect was one of the reasons why our mac users abandoned the macintosh
>server and went linux - too much trouble with it, although I'm not
convinced
>that at least part of that wasn't a user problem...
You've got to be kidding: I set up my Retro backup scripts 4 or 5 yrs
ago and apart from minor adjustments (replaced DAT with DLT, added
new clients etc) I'm essentially running the same scripts. I've
fought Amanda, straight dump/restore or tar/untar, Veritas and none
of them comes close.
Currently I use Amanda to backup my Linux and Solaris and I have to
tweak something every week or so. Its worst failing is that it
doesn't append more than 1 backup session to a tape, so some days a
backup tape will only contain a few 100 MBs of (incremental) backup.
V expensive when the tape is a DLT cartridge. And of course, when you
come round to reusing the tape, it just rewrites from the front, so
you end up with what I call "answering machine tape syndrome": the
first 10% of the tape is written over and over and gets worn out
while the remaining 90% is virgin tape.
When it comes to restoring from the backup, Retro's snap-shots makes
this really simple. And remember: your users don't thank you for
backing up their files, only for restoring them.
-- Sak Wathanasin Network Analysis LimitedInternet: sw@network-analysis.ltd.uk Phone: (+44) 24 76 41 99 96 Mobile: (+44) 79 70 75 19 12 Fax: (+44) 24 76 69 06 90
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