Backup Application of the Year
 

A new poll this year.

--jeremy

Might want to add cpio to that list since it's still sort of widely used.

Added.

--jeremy

dd could be added as well

As a backup administrator, I would have to say that dd should never be used for backups. It's more of a utility to create disk image files, not intended for long term storage and or disaster recovery.

I guess I will know soon enough what is most preferred tool for backups, but what would you recommend ?.

Amanda is the de facto backup on Linux/Unix platforms.

Umm, not really. Just because something is popular doesn't make it the de facto.

Many places I've worked, we actually use commercial backup programs that offer and support more higher end enterprise hardware, etc.

Personally, I use Bacula. I've been a backup administrator for 5-6 years now at almost every employer I've been with and mostly used Veritas Netbackup Server. Only at one job we were on a restricted budget so I converted their existing Amanda setup to Bacula that scaled better using disk based backups, with offsite storage for backups in case of disaster recovery.

It's really a matter of preference. If you have a few machines you are backing up, a simple rsync with tar/gzip you can get away with. If you have more than 10-20 machines you have to backup in a mixed environment, say with Windows and Linux, go with something like Amanda or Bacula. Try them both out to see which one suits you best.

Personally I picked Bacula over Amanda for a few main reasons. It's got a native Windows client (since I had some windows clients to backup), no need for Samba and it's interface which can be used on the CLI or GUI reminded me of a commercial backup solution.

I'm unclear about the criteria for voting. Is it most popular? Easiest? Most flexible? Most features? "The standard"? What you recommend? (to who in particular?) Or, like all polls, everyone has their own criteria and we don't know what we're measuring?

Most awards, eg. Academy Awards, have some sort of guidelines judges usually adhere to; I was just wondering if this poll and the other distro one have any agreed upon guidelines that I'm missing. What do you guys think? Or should we have a poll on best guidelines? :)

rsync and a bash script works perfectly for me

EMC Networker is what we run, but from the list of available options, tar is what I use the most.

Umm... we use Amanda's native Win32 Client to backup our Windows systems.

Amanda, with its best fit scheduler, works in a way that is much more hands off than the others once it is configured. Its a shame that so much of the world is set on doing a full of everything on friday nights, which typically requires 10 times the tape resources to accomplish. Because amanda enables the use of smaller tapes on an every night basis, and all I need to do is take a cursory glance at the emails it sends me, there is not to me, a simpler method, nor a more secure method if its set up correctly.

Using amanda is a no-brainer for me.

--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best
friends are trying to kill us.

What about rsnapshot?