[CentOS] Backup Redux

Thu Dec 8 14:53:37 UTC 2011
Alan McKay <alan.mckay at gmail.com>

Hey folks,

I just went through the archives to see what people are doing for backups,
and here is what I found :
- amanda
- bacula
- BackupPC
- FreeNAS

Here is my situation : we have pretty much all Sun hardware with a Sun
StorageTek SL24 tape unit backing it all up.  OSes are a combination of
RHEL and CentOS.  The software we are using is EMC

    NetWorker Management Console version 3.5.1.Build.269
    based on NetWorker version 7.5.1.Build.269

The pickle we are in right now is that this software is Java based, and
stops working at a very specific release of JRE (1.6.26 or something like
that).  We still have some machines around with that release and it looks
like we need to keep at least 1 of them, but this is clearly not a long
term viable solution.

In the end I want to get our central IT group to take over our backups if
possible (we are a bit of an island outside of central IT), but as I pursue
that path I also want to pursue a 2ndary path assuming they will say "no".

I am familiar with BackupPC and will look at the other recommendations
above.  I think that Bacula and Amanda are sort of the drop-in replacements
for what we have now so I'll look at them most closely.   But if I do have
to carry forward with our own backups I'd ideally like to get out of the
tape game - never liked tapes.

Anyway, since the last big backup discussion was over a year ago I figured
I'd kick off another one to see if anything new has come up in the mean
time.

What are the current recommendations?

cheers,
-Alan

-- 
“Don't eat anything you've ever seen advertised on TV”
         - Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food"