Tuesday 23 June 2009

Cross Platform Backup Solutions

Well, things are going to be crazy busy again over the coming few days or so.

I am looking for some suggestions of Cross-Platform backup solutions. I'm looking to be backing up a mix of Linux and Windows OS's, including MS Exchange 2007, SQL Server 2005 and 2008, MySQL Databases and VMWare and Xen virtual machines (mostly Linux VMs).

Looked at Symantec NetBackup - too pricey by a mile - currently considering Zmanda, BackupExec and CA ArcServe. I would appreciate any suggestions or feedback on how anyone else has got on?

Jim

6 comments:

Tobie Fysh said...

Not bloody BackupExec! Can you remember all the problems we had in the past.

swisstone said...

Hi Jim!
Its Tony - (Still at WR!)
Hope all is well!

We are using BackupExec 12e with Dell LTO - its a pain, last week I had to reinstall the KL server. The database gets corrupt and the tape drivers get sticky and the backup hangs!!! Some days it works in a matter of 10 hours - some days its still running 24 hours later. A re-install (and re-set the backups) tends to cure it!

Oddly enough as we speak I am re-re-re-installing the scotland backupexec 10d as the same thing has started happening!! Dont like it!

hmmm... User bakcups are now using a Debian linux box and BackupPC - it uses the LAN and SMB to pull the users data off at set periods (every 24hrs) - you can also use rsync to backup linux and open files on windows boxes without interuption. (rsync needs client installed)
All the data is compressed and pooled using checksum so no duplicates are stored (we have over 580GB of data in 280GB of space)
hmmm.. oh well thats my rant! :)

Unknown said...

Here's a snippet from a similar discussion recently on NZLUG. Hope that helps.

"""
thanks for the discussion and suggestions. Sorry for being a bit harsh on the
rsync, but that just isn't what our admins are after. But I did get a few good
suggestions. Thanks especially to Andrew, Robert and Daniel for those.

Here's a quick summary of what I got out of it:

It seems like there are two big favourites for remote backup software in the
community: Amanda [1] and Bacula [2, 3]. Both are open source. At least Bacula
is also available in an enterprise version [4] with support, etc.

Amanda seems to be a bit of a nuisance to some, but I haven't heard anything
negative about Bacula, yet.

Another recommendation I got was Vembu [5], and they also have got an
educational discount plan available.

BackupPC seems to be a bunch of Perl scripts that seems to work well on Linux
and Windows, but I didn't see (at least not easily on their web page) that it
also works (well) on MacOS. Well ... and then I've got personally a bit of a
negative position towards Perl.

BTW, all the tools mentioned (except for BackupPC) are cross-platform backup
solutions, and they seem to be still properly maintained.

So, this is what I'm pitching forward to our institute's admin to have a look
at whether he finds something he likes. As it's not up to me, myself or I ...

[1] http://www.amanda.org/
[2] http://www.bacula.org/en/
[3] http://sourceforge.net/projects/bacula (click onto link "Details")
[4] http://www.baculasystems.com/
[5] http://www.vembu.com/storegrid/education-backup.php
[6] http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
"""

Jim Rippon said...

Thank you all for your helpful comments.

We have gone with a combination of open-source Amanda for our linux/unix systems, and we are evaluating Microsoft DPM for our Windows systems at the moment.

The plan is to purchase a cross-platform solution once budget becomes available.

Unknown said...

Have you looked at backula http://www.bacula.org/en/ excellent product and is cross platform and open source.

I found it here on this site http://www.opensitesolutions.com/services/network.php#backp

Unknown said...

Hi Jim

I have just implement one backup systems with bacula and currently in the process of doing a second one.

It is a very good tool, the learning curve is steep, But when you get it into place it just works(if your security requirements are high, you can encrypting your backup with ssl cert).

Peder.