Open Source File Replication/backup solution needed
 

Greetings fellow Nerds.
My name is Jerry, I am IT Manager at a Wholesale Food Distributor in Florida. Currently I am responsible for a mostly IBM shop, running a mix of AIX, OS/400. VMware, and Windows.

My P-series running AIX and Oracle and my AS/400 both back up to tape drives daily.
But my VMware system is not being backed up, the virtual machines are, but my tape drive just broke down.

I just ordered a server grade machine with an i5 CPU, running 3 2TB SATA drives in RAID5, this is going to be my new backup server.

I am hoping I can put Linux on it, and some sort of open source file replications, real time backup software that will back up my Windows servers, and my Windows desktops in real time.... any sort of animal exist?

Thanks for you help!
Jerry

Hello Jerry and Welcome to LinuxQuestions,

If you're looking for pure file synchronization between machines of different OS, then have a look at Unison File Synchronizer. I use it in a production environment to synchronize a lot of files between Linux and Windows and it works great.

If you want however to use a backup solution you can look into Amanda which is pretty powerful and has clients for various operating systems.

Kind regards,

Eric

Amanda sure looks like the kind of thing I am looking for. Thanks!

Hi,

You're welcome. Hope it works out. If you have any doubts, problems or questions installing and/or configuring then you can always post them here. Have fun with Linux.

Kind regards,

Eric

Eric, I do have a question. I downloaded Amanda for x64 in a Tar.gz format, and both the X86 and X64 Windows clients, don't think I will have problems with that.. smells a lot like AIX...

But I downloaded Ubuntu server X64 for the OS, and I see the file is called ubuntu-10.04-server-amd64
Is this ok for an intel CPU? I am having the machine built with an i5. I don't see an intel or amd version differentiated on their download page, I am hoping it will work on both.

Hello,

Yes it's OK, that's the one you should use for Intel 64bit CPU. That seems the way they differentiate between 32 and 64bit versions. Same as with Debian.

Kind regards,

Eric