Backing up whole system

[Craig White]

On Sun, 2009-05-10 at 00:53 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:

> I think it is, although in the last year, the number of incidents of people 
> coming to the amanda-users list for help with rpms has dropped noticeably.  I 
> have NDI if its because the rpms are now working "out of the box" or if its 
> because there seems to be a wider selection of ways to do it that appeal to 
> the user, newbie or old hand, meaning amanda is getting onto fewer systems.  I 
> personally like the set it up once and forget it until you need to recover 
> something that amanda offers.  Heck, even the $3500 a seat Arkeia takes far 
> more fiddling than amanda, every time you want to run it.  Hell of a way to 
> run a train.  IMNSHO, the eye candy doesn't cut it, good backups do.
> 
> My last post in this thread.  However, if the OP installs the amanda rpms and 
> it works the way it is supposed to, I would very much like to hear about that.  
> 
> Most folks just go away once the question has been answered/argued about 
> without ever letting us know of the successes or failures of our chosen 
> methods.  That leaves both of us in the dark calling each other less than 
> experts.  And that isn't pretty to the bystanders.
----
I don't know a thing about arkeia.

I use and have used Computer Associates BrightStor ArcServe at a few
clients, both Windows and Linux versions and it's OK. I'm at the point
now where there won't be any more purchases of ArcServe.

I use Backup Exec on one Windows server and hate it. It's only virtue
was that it was really cheap.

I used to use amanda with most of my Linux clients. It's a very good
program but is entirely command line driven unless you purchase Zamanda
and thus my clients have no chance at restoring files without my
involvement.

Several years ago, I switched over to Bacula because Kern Sibbald is a
genius (see apcupsd) and there are other tools like their web based
backup reports and a webmin module and now they have 'BAT' (Bacula
Administration Tool) which is a very nice QT4 driven console
application.

In short, I think amanda has lost much of the newer installations to
Bacula and not because amanda isn't a very effective backup program...it
is, but because their development has been too slow to embrace new
features. A current feature list can be found here...
http://bacula.org/en/dev-manual/Current_State_Bacula.html

What I have discovered is that the software compression sophistication
of amanda is moot when using LTO which is pretty much all I use any
more. The sophistication of changer handling in Bacula makes using the 8
and 16 tape changer mechanisms a piece of cake. I have installations
with Windows, Macintosh and Linux clients and the client setup is
essentially the same regardless.

Sorry to tell you this but amanda is yesterdays news.

Craig


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