backup systems. (Use Amanda!!)

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

I have been using Amanda (www.amanda.org) since about 1995 when I hired an
engineer to work on various projects at my old ISP company.

In 1999 I did a 7-month stint as IT admin for a 50-person development shop out
in Westborough.  Their network was built mainly around a NetApp filer (80-gig
storage) and a ClearCase server based on a Sun E3000.  Backups were performed
by Legato NetWorker, a very pricy piece of software, onto a 7-slot DLT-IV
backup drive (20-gig tapes).

During my time over overhauling systems there, I had a good opportunity to
compare freeware systems vs. their commercial equivalents.  The company bought
out a Russian development shop and brought in four or five of their engineers;
that gave me the opportunity to respond to some strong objections to ClearCase
(I wound up helping them set up and migrate files onto a new CVS server).

Anyway, I brought Amanda with me and although I didn't replace Legato, I set
it up to run parallel backups onto a second DLT jukebox.  It let me back up
over 100 filesystems located on over 50 servers of every variety, ranging from
antiquated SCO boxes to the NetApp and the E3000.  Legato, by contrast, is
only supported on the leading 3 or 4 software platforms.

Basically, I like Amanda a lot better than Legato or home-brew cpio/tar
scripts.  And I use it on my home LAN today.

This month I overhauled my LAN and one of the items on the task list was
getting rid of my now-obsolete DLT drive.  Surfing over to eBay, I bought a
used Sony AIT-1 tape drive, a couple dozen 35-gig tapes, and a
differential-SCSI host adapter (total outlay about $500, to various sellers). 
Some aspects of my Amanda configuration, which backs up about 70 gigs of music
files and 20 gigs of other stuff on my two Linux boxes:

- I have a set of 16 tapes, labeled 001 through 016, which Amanda asks me for
in sequence (1 per night, but I can skip one or more nights if I want).
- Incrementals are run daily (more often if you really wanted to, but it's
designed to run daily).  If you've changed the tape, the incrementals will go
onto the tape; else they'll go onto a hard drive on the Amanda server.
- You set up your tape server with a hard drive (for incrementals) and tape
drive, and a server configuration of Amanda.  I have about 6 or 8 gigs of
available space for incremental dumps, which lasts at least a month given my
usage (i.e. I can go on vacation and forget about backups, knowing they'll
still happen).
- If you buy a jukebox (used ones aren't too pricy on eBay) it can be set up
to use it.
- If you have a PostScript printer, you can tell it to print out the list of
filesystems and backup date whenever it runs a nightly backup.  I used that
feature back in 1999, so as to include a nice label in each tape box before
sending it off to Iron Mountain.

What I like about Amanda mainly is the set & forget aspect of it.  Once
everything's up and running, you really don't have to think about backups
anymore.  It's real PEACE OF MIND.  Once a day you'll get an email showing
which filesystems were backed up, and any errors encountered.  If the tape
drive breaks down, you can relax and just let things go to hard disk for a
week or two if that's how long it takes until you can get it fixed.

A couple of things Amanda doesn't do well:  it can't back up directories that
are larger than a single tape; it won't alert you if you create a new
filesystem and forget to include it in the backup config; it doesn't have a
snazzy Legato-like GUI; it doesn't generate an emergency-recovery root disk;
it doesn't back up your Windows C: drives (maybe they added support for that
recently, I haven't checked); and you have to come up with a separate
configuration if you want to keep long-term archival copies.  So you have to
pay attention to what you're doing when you make certain changes to your
configuration, and you have to lay out your directories so they won't overflow
a tape (and/or keep buying bigger tape drives, like I do).

I give a very strong recommendation to buy a decent-sized tape drive and set
up Amanda rather than most any of the other choices out there.  If you keep a
lot of data on Windows PCs, move it to Linux, set up a Samba server (with
RAID, the "I" stands for inexpensive), and add it to your Amanda backup
configuration.  No data of any value deserves to be left lying on a Windows C:
drive.

There is a rival utility out there (afbackup) which seems to be getting more
developer attention (Amanda is mature and in maintenance-only developer mode).
 If I were experimenting with backup software for the first time, I would take
a look at afbackup, Amanda, and perhaps one or two of the commercial packages.
 (Especially if you're responsible for a corporate database installation, you
might require features which go beyond what the freeware packages have.)

-rich