OT: Backup Solutions

[Bill Campbell]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009, Bill McEachran wrote:

>My bad form in not mentioning the OSes involved -- it's a mixed environment
>of Linux, AIX, and Windows Server 2003.

We use rsync to back up systems to file systems mirroring the
file systems on the machine being backed up.  This may be to
external hard drives or to other systems which may be local or
off-site depending on the situation.

This works well amongst all *nix versions I have seen with the
caveat that there may be issues with older versions of OS X and
programs that use resource forks.  The Apple versions of rsync
handle these properly, but other *nix versions probably don't.

Rsync is available for the Microsoft Virus, Windows, but I don't
have personal experience with it.  On the sites where we have to
back up Windows boxes, we usually set the directory/drives that
need to back up as shared from the Windows box, then use smbmount
on a Linux box and rsync from that mount to the destination.
This avoids having to do anything on Windows other than support
the sharing.

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
Voice:          (206) 236-1676  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
Fax:            (206) 232-9186  Skype: jwccsllc (206) 855-5792

Good luck to all you optimists out there who think Microsoft can deliver
35 million lines of quality code on which you can operate your business.
   -- John C. Dvorak