Hi,i really have much idea about Linux but i can suggest that go for raid backups they are more useful in taking daily backups they use number of hard disks for their operation and u can store it on the hard disks and if u get problem in one hard disk crashes also u can have a backup so u can change the hard disk so that can u give u good backup secured data and also u save disk space is well basically it is used in large amount of data.

Markw78, I can understand your concern about Windows backup if that is a major component of your backup needs. Amanda has always been strongest in the Unix/Linux environment. Have you noticed that Zmanda has just released a completely new Windows client?

http://www.linuxquestions.org/bookmarks/tags/zmanda

harshadeep, RAID is no replacement for a regular cycle of tape backups in an environment with a number of servers. It just doesn't give the same level of redundancy or depth of recovery. I have a tape library with a 6 week (5 days a week) cycle of tapes as well as archives. With compression, that's over 40TB capacity, and I can recover a file from any day going back 6 weeks or to the end of the semester over the last 3 semesters (archives). We also have RAID, but it doesn't replace the tape backups.

I have to agree. RAID is not a backup, it's a good mechanism for disk failure and only disk failure before a disk can be replaced.

As for Commvault, you'll probably save money by looking into Netbackup as a solution if your going to go with Commercial backup. At least in my experience, I can get better quotes with it over Commvault any day of the week.


As for amanda, I didn't learn everything about it cause the guy who set it up before I arrived had it so screwed up, I would have rather start from scratch and what bacula has to offer is more appealing with our setup we have. As for backuppc, I see it as more of a desktop type backup, something we don't backup.

But yeah, you'll get nothing but opinions here, the best possible solution is just like asking what Distro to go with, try out a few and find the one that works for you for your final decision.

We use DAR completely on all our servers - it supports network backup via streaming to a client program (although we haven't yet got round to implementing this yet.) It's quite fast, supports encryption and compression of it's created archives, and supports differential and incremental backups too.

It has a good mailing list which it's author is very prompt at replying to, and there are plenty of people who run it on Windows (although I believe you need Cygwin - we don't have any Windows servers so I can't say for definite.)

http://dar.sourceforge.net.

Bingo. Bottom line.