[H-GEN] Any recommendations for Tape Backup software ?

[David Jericho]

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James McPherson - PTS Engineer wrote:

> actually work? I know from experience that the majority of
> sysadmins _do not_ verify their backups -- it bites them and
> me when they call in the middle of the night....

I make a point of it infact. I backup to multiple places, and on 
multiple media.[1] Idealy I'd love to be able to store on a machine 
offsite as well, but I don't have that luxury yet.[2]

> My co-presenter knows (firsthand experience due to providing
> oncall support) of a company which lost _6_ years of data
> because they failed to test their sysadmin's backup scripts.

The one single flaw I do see with Bacula is that it's not tar or dump on 
tape. It is very well documented how to get at the data, but it's the 
one single flaw. It's trivial to get at the data otherwise.

> 6 years of "yes, the backup was successful" but this message
> was printed whether the script worked or no due to a logic bug.

This is part of the reason I don't overly enjoy coding. I enjoy it for 
certain things, but I design everything of mine to fail and report 
failure, rather than assume success.

> Save yourself some stress and think about both sides of the
> backup picture before going on to the next problem.

Very true. Every admin has heard horror stories of how other admins have 
lost their jobs because they f(&ked up in this area. Be paranoid. Be 
afraid, this is one area of your job where when it all hits the fan, if 
you've done your homework you'll pop out the otherside with a bigger 
budget and a pay rise.

Speaking of which, I have some documentation to write :)

[1] As much as I still don't believe in disk backup, I have backup on 
tape, and disk. Disk is quick, easy, and cheap. RAID it and you've got a 
resonable solution. The disadvantages of tape are very well known, so I 
can place a 6 month old tape in and be fairly certain what sort of 
results I'll get from it.

[2] I'm constantly amazed at the number of companies, that even after 
all the IT related horror stories from 9/11, that companies with budgets 
of billions don't spend money on offsite storage and service replication.

-- 
David Jericho
Systems Administrator, Plugged In Software


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