[NTLUG:Discuss] network backup solutions

[Chris Cox]

MontyS at videopost.com wrote:
> Greetings.
> 
> Current configuration:
> 
> NT4 PDC/file server
> NT4 SDC/file server
> NT4 Exchange 5.5 server
> RHES3 Oracle 9.2.0.4 database/server (currently in testing)
> 2 RHL9 webservers
> 
> Future configuration (hopefully...):
> 
> RHES3 file server & PDC via Samba
> RHES3 Sendmail/Postfix mail server
> RHES3 Oracle database/server
> Fedora Core x webservers
> 
> Clients:
> 
> All Windows NT4/XP Pro.

The backup routine has to handle sending a ALTER SYSTEM QUIESCE RESTRICTED
to the Oracle DB (vis ssh for example from the backup control host).  Now,
the question is, can you live with the downtime
or not?  Depending on the size of the db instances and the ammount of
availability you have to provide, you may have to place the DB onto
a filesystem that is easily snapshotted via LVM.  Then you could
quiesce, LV snapshot and ATLER SYSTEM UNQUIESCE, then backup the snapshot
LV.  Backing up Linux filesystems using LV snapshotting is a good
idea in general.

The rest is simply a matter of choice.  I prefer star for backups,
though you could do disk-to-disk with rsync (then do star of the
disk cache to tape if you wish).  You can even use rsync with Windows.
Or... you could use Samba to get at the Windows stuff.  Might be
a problem with ACLs in both reading and restoring the data.

We wrote our own set of programs to manage backups where I work...
Stephen Klein told me about Bacula http://www.bacula.org/, he says
it shows a lot of promise and it says it will backup Windows hosts.

Just some thoughts.