Apple Enterprise Backup Solutions v. 4

[Go3iverson]

Hi all -

If you have a server, you need a good backup solution. I'd like to invite you all to download a copy of my newest installment of Apple Enterprise Backup Solutions, that includes some great tips and tricks on how to consolidate your data, rotate your media and which software packages and tools may work best in your environment.

You can get the latest document on my website at:
http://www.district13computing.com/projects.html

I hope you find it helpful in keeping your data safe!

Michael

[ora]

Damn, i was going to report this as sales/spam then i saw it was you. Go3iverson. Will check it out.

[Go3iverson]

Originally Posted by ora

Damn, i was going to report this as sales/spam then i saw it was you. Go3iverson. Will check it out.

lol - thanks!

No cost involved to download the document - it is freely available. Backup is a subject that most folks don't like and is a very thankless task. Since I've had to do a lot of the research in the past and have to continually for different clients, I figure I'll save other administrators a lot of legwork out there and help jump start their backup solutions.

It's here to help. I've gotten some great feedback, so I keep publishing revisions to keep everyone up to date on the latest and greatest!

Michael

[fredk]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the document, it's very comprehensive! However I have an issue that I'm not sure you address particularly, namely backing up to NAS boxes via FTP.

At present we mirror data from our 40 instrument and user PC's to a network-drive mounted 4.3TB X-Serve RAID (using robocopy and rsync scripts for want of anything better), from where we back up to a variety of offsite RAID5 NAS boxes via ftp. The reason for this rather than tape is twofold. Firstly the storage capacity of tapes vs disk (can easily be 30-40Gbs additional date every day), the second is simply the cost of a sufficiently large tape library solution. Basically, we are dealing with enterprise levels of data, on a SoHo budget (that's Universities for you!), and the only backup program that seems to handle backing up to ftp is Retrospect.

However, without too much griping, this:
a) requires almost daily maintenance and monitoring
b) frequently fails to backup at all
c) often gets its catalogues out of sync (and so doesn't back up)
d) doesn't automatically restart itself after a power outage and
e) can't handle sets larger than 512Gb, resulting in over forty individual scripts to maintain...

Plus, given that it holds all the info in a binary file, should this become corrupted (which it does about every six months), it requires some nifty juggling to reinstate a backed-up copy of the config file.

I have been looking for an alternative for about eighteen months but with no luck. I was very impressed with Bru on many levels, and if I could hack our NAS boxes to install software, would almost definitely be the answer. PresStore looks promising too, but the pricing looks somewhat prohibitive for our setup...

Any suggestions would be very gratefully received!

Thanks,

Fred.
(Keeping-fingers-crossed-that-TimeMachine-will-solve-the-problem-but-not-holding-my-breath)