Software for backups

[Alvin Oga]

hi ya chuck

On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Chuck Yerkes wrote:

backup methodology is fun stuff ... "doing it" is left to scripts

> > yes, it'd be better to do backups w/ user's knowing/doing anything
> > but that just makes the backup-admin's job painful
> > 	you either have to get veritas/legato/etc ...
> > 	or you do your own versions and hope you pick up all
> > 	the files the users created/installed
> 
> And have job security forever....

i rather spend my 8-10-16 hr days developing new code to do foo-bar stuff
and not play/worry/wonder with people's backups ...
( and nobody else needs to play/worry/wonder either cause it works )

> > > I've had tons of problems with a "shared folder."  Laptops come
> > > with 60GB drives.  100 laptops won't backup well through that.
> > 
> > 100 laptops x 60GB each is 6TB of data
> > 	- i'm fairly certain you are not blindly backing up
> > 	100 laptops without some "backup rules" being applied
> > 	that they dont know about
> When you leave it to the users, you don't know that re: shared folders.

yup... you dont know what they did to their machine either...
if they installed their favorite games and friends virus

its easy enough to have a ms-script do things users dont
want to do or need to know about
 
> Eh, if the users are installing their own apps, then you have other
> issues there as well.

yup... in my (real life) world ..
	- users dont have "admin" priviledge
	- users dont get to install stuff
	- users put stuff they care about in "my documents"
 	- users dont get to hit the power switch either

	- 1 unix admin can handle 20, 50, 100, 500 users.. no problem

	- windoze admin asnwer peoples questions about 
		- how come it doesnt print today
		- how come emails dont go out or come in today

> Common are policies that say "if your machine eats it, we will
> recover it to our standard build with your data and settings."

that is the test ..... randomly recrate ther pc from
bare metal ( or at least a blank disk ) and see where your
backup methodology failed or passes

> > - all user installed/downloaded files belong in 
> >  my-documents/download or something so you can go find it
> 
> Except when an app puts them elsewhere.

you as the admin, better know where every file is put and
what created it

> Users don't want to run computers.  They have their box that
> runs spreadsheets or gets their sales data or what not.
> *We* want to run computers. 

yup
 
> > if you want to backup windoze boxes w/o user intervention/knowledge
> > 
> > linux#  mount  windoze:\\C  /mnt/windoze1
> > 	( forgot the exact syntax/options )
> 
> Bad call:
> Ooops, they closed it.  Now your unix box is hung.

dont do it so you get hung .... there are ways to avoid silly
problems

> Oh, and they're whole harddrive is exported to the world.

than that admin should be fired .. on the spot

> Don't treat Windows boxes like Unix boxes and you're head
> will have fewer bruises from the wall.

if you spend more than a couple minutes per backup per
machine ... something is seriously wrong
	-- enough knocking your head into the wall will
	oneday bring some light to the subject .. ??

if you dont want users to do their "save their important files",
than the system will do it for them ..
	- do it at night when its less likely for them
	to hit the power switch while you were at lunch or meetings

	- but you lose a days work till backup occurs at night,
	so manangerment better know when/how data is backedup
 
> > linux#  find /mnt/windoze1 -mtime -7(days) -print |  \
> > 	tar zxcf todaysdate.tgz -T -
> 
> mtime huh?  NTFS supports that well?

works good enough for me ..
 
> ...
> > 	now you have their windoze backups.. guaranteed
> > 	( done .. just saved the company $1M from buying veritas
> Wow, you spend a lot for that.  $10k/user it would seem.  I just
> was involved in spending about what we pay 1 person for a big roomful
> of servers.  And it's more than saving one person's efforts.

i seen companies spend that kind of crazy $$$
and still fail doing their backups ...
( just depends on management, their backup admin, and computer policies )

> Find me the tape that has sharon's data before last week and has
> this file on it.

or from a year ago .... no problem .... i keep data for at least
6mon to a year... and can restore to any particular day
 
> > ( done... just saved the company from buying 6TB of backups
> > ( for the 100 laptops w/ 60GB each
> No, you just bought a lot of disk.  100TB at the least.
> I don't need ONE backup.  I need them every month.  I need to be
> able to reproduce a laptop as it was in July.  For 2 years.

yup...  keeping data for a year or two is hard or trivial
depending on how you do it ... ( trivial to me )
 
> Work makes me use a Windows box.

my sympathies to you...

>  It's ONLY purpose is to read the
> 5 notes messages/day I get.  The rest of my work is on a real machine.
> Every couple days, I open the laptop and a window says: "You've missed
> a scheduled backup, trying in [5] minutes" unless you hit cancel.

that's dumb and stupid and worthless
	- if that machine died, you dont have backups of that machine
	since its last successful backup

> The disk whirs and the machine slows to a crawl and then it stops
> doing that.  ANd my data is backed up I assume (and since I work
> with the folks who drive 12 tape robots around, I actually KNOW its
> backed up).

i wouldnt trust a bunch of tapes even if you gave me $100K to use
 	( separate issue )

> Rolling your own for cross platform backups might save you several
> thousand dollars. 

or a few minutes/hours of work ... jsut depends on management, budget
and the backup admin

> Perhaps enough to cover the productivity lost
> when 2 or 3 people don't have their data for a couple days.

nobody lost data in 10-15 yrs ... that i know bout where it was
done my way  

data loss is not acceptable under any condition... 
	- how often you do daily/hourly/per-transaction backups
	is a separate issue

c ya
alvin

short answer for david's original questions...
	- get amanda for windoze to send its data to the backup
	server ... and let the 3 or 5 backup machines figure it
	all out and replicate, encrypt and protect itself  ( backups )