[CentOS] Backup Question

[Les Mikesell]

Joseph L. Casale wrote:
> We are migrating an LTO2 library off Veritas and NTBackup on a Windows Server to a Linux Server with either Bacula or Amanda. Originally, the Windows server used scripts to sync changes from various other Windows servers using Robocopy to a locally attached set of volumes, then ran the backup nightly (Full's were always done).

If this sync script runs on the target machine, you could simply change 
it to use cygwin rsync instead with the destination on a linux box.

> I now had hoped to rsync the Samba shares to a local replica on the Linux Server and then start the backup every night after it finishes.
  Would this be the most efficient way to do this, or are there better 
tools for this?

Rsync directly from the target would be more efficient. I've never been 
able to make this work using cygwin sshd on the windows side to accept 
the connection and run rsync, but that could be a bug that is fixed now. 
  It will work using rsync in daemon mode on the windows side, or 
initiating the connection from windows to a Linux target via ssh.

If you don't want the whole cygwin setup on your machines, there is a 
minimal install for rsync here: 
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=34854

> I need an additional replica of the data, so using the Windows Bacula client doesn't help,

I thought bacula could be configured to keep both an on-line and tape copy.

> and I must be able to only replicate the changes or I'll miss my backup window based on the volume of data.

I use backuppc to keep an online and easily accessible history and 
amanda for tapes that go offsite (and I hope to never have to recover 
from the amanda tapes because it is much more difficult) and I just let 
them run independently.  If your backup window is tight, you might have 
to run both (or bacula) against your rsync-mirrored snapshot instead of 
the actual target.  This works well for data files but you'll need some 
extra contortions if you expect to do bare metal restores of the windows 
targets.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com