O'Reilly Open Source Convention - August 1-5, 2005

Session
Open Source Data Backup, or: How To Sleep Better at Night
Fran Fabrizio, Senior Systems Administrator, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Track: Linux
Date: Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005
Time: 4:30pm - 5:15pm
Location: Portland 255
Data backup is one of the highest priorities for any systems administrator, and implementing a backup system that’s reliable, scalable, easy to manage, and cost-effective can be an imposing task. Data is often an organization’s most valuable asset, and the data backup solution must inspire absolute confidence in the administrator and the network users that when crisis hits, the data is safe and can be restored.
Amanda and Bacula are two packages that allow an administrator to backup many hosts over the network to a single storage point. These packages can backup many flavors of Linux and Unix hosts as well as Windows clients, and are well suited to a wide variety of backup scenarios. They are widely used, industrial-strength solutions to the data backup challenge.
The philosophy, benefits, and limitations of each toolset will be discussed, allowing the attendee to pick the right package for their needs. A case study will be presented showing how these tools are used to provide completely automated, hands-off data backup to a public university’s computer science department while saving thousands of dollars in software costs.

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