Post by David CombsPost by Cydrome LeaderIf you're backing up a fresh installation, a flar is great.
If want to backup a machine that's been used for a while, there's really
no replacement for something like netbackup, of if you want free,
something like bacula.
arcserve, arkeia and amanda are all pure trash.
QUESTION 1: What degree of agreement about the above?
I've always managed to produce my own backup tools.
It depends how much time and skill you can throw at it,
verses how much money and time you throw at a 3rd-party
product. The skill bit is important though, as backups
which turn out to be unrecoverable are a complete
disaster.
When I was managing company infrastructure, my normal
rule for introducing a new server was, install it,
install all the apps, add it to the backup schedule,
allow it to do it's first backup, wipe all the disks
clean, restore it all from the backup, check it's all
working, and only then can it be considered for going
into service.
You also need to periodically test it's still working.
When you get a new server in, before you start setting
it up, try doing a bare metal restore of one of your
other critical systems onto it, just to check you
still can.
Also, I encouraged users to ask for individual file
restores rather than cursing them for doing so - that
was also to periodically check backups (and individual
file restores tended to be a much more frequent
requirement than bare metal restores, before ZFS
snapshots existed).
Post by David CombsQUESTION 2: What difference if he's using ZFS?
Snapshots mean users can self-service their own
individual file restores. Whatever you use for bare
metal restores will need to know about ZFS filesystems.
There's a list of commercial software which does at:
http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+zfs/faq#HWhichthirdpartybackupproductssupportZFS3F
--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]