Hi,

Simple question:

If I want to restore an full backup of AMANDA, will it restore the OS along with the files or does it just restore all the files in /

Cheers

Henry

I have not used Amanda for it, but from what I read on their forums, it's possible to do SOMETHING like it, but seems a bit more involved that I'd like to get in a 'dead server' situation.

Take a look at mondoarchive, mkcdrec, or systemimager. I've had good luck with them. Mondoarchive gives you a bootable ISO image, suitable for CD or DVD, and even network booting. If you're going to identical hardware, you're able to literally boot from the disk, press ENTER twice, and let it roll. You're left with a working server...identical to what you had when you took the image. Amanda would be a great solution for day-to-day backups, if you nuked a file, etc., but for whole systems, it's problematic.

OS Recovery is a special case of backup. The simple answer is that Amanda can recover what you backed up. However, in an active running OS, some files may not get backed up in a consistent state. It's a gamble. I've had one failure out of a number of times I've had to do it. Did an update install of the OS over that and it fixed it.

The answer from TBOne gives you some alternatives for disaster recovery if that is your concern. In a server environment, I also typically use mirrored boot drives. Many who use Linux just back up their data and assume they will do a reinstall if there is a disk failure, then recover the data.