Hi Mike, Generally, if you can't justify it yourself I'm wondering why you're using Amanda.
But anyway, here's something that may be worth mentioning: business continuity. The backups will be used in the event that something catastrophic has happened. Let's say that the building has burned down and the guy that did the backup scripts is away on business/holiday. With amanda, all you have to do is get some machines up and running and restore from your offsite backup (you are taking a backup offsite, aren't you? - quick note: don't completely trust fire safes) using an easily obtainable backup package. After this kind of critical failure amanda needs a single restore operation (assuming a full backup on one media) and everything ends up hunky-dory as fast as the tape drive/network can work. It can't be up and running any faster than this. With the hand-rolled scripts it could easily take someone a few days to figure out where everything should be going, or for the guy to wrote them to get back/talk someone through it over the phone. The company is going to lose money already from the original disaster, but it would lose even more if people can't carry on working as soon as possible. I'm currently using "hand-rolled" scripts here on my Windows servers, but that's because I don't want a restore from tape to end up broken by some kind of star/linux/smb/ntfs complication. Once ntbackup has backed up to a single bkf file (including NTFS permissions and the like), Amanda is free to back it up to tape. It adds an extra level of complication, but ntbackup stores the original location in the bkf file which makes it simple for someone else to restore. However, the customer is still the customer and if they decide they aren't happy with amanda, or more importantly that they don't trust it, you might find that you have to go against your gut feeling and do what they want. It would still be worth pointing out what a huge security risk the rcp command is, and if they insist on using their scripts at least get them to remove the r* accounts setup stuff and use something like rsync over an encrypted channel (why bother protecting the file on the disk if you're going to potentially transfer it in plain text over the network). One other thing. If you have space on the backup media and enough time to do a complete backup every night, why would you want to do anything other than a full backup? I hope this helps, Mark Lidstone IT and Network Support Administrator BMT SeaTech Ltd Grove House, Meridians Cross, 7 Ocean Way Ocean Village, Southampton. SO14 3TJ. UK Tel: +44 (0)23 8063 5122 Fax: +44 (0)23 8063 5144 E-Mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: www.bmtseatech.co.uk ======================================================================== == Confidentiality Notice and Disclaimer: The contents of this e-mail and any attachments are intended only for the use of the e-mail addressee(s) shown. If you are not that person, or one of those persons, you are not allowed to take any action based upon it or to copy it, forward, distribute or disclose the contents of it and you should please delete it from your system. BMT SeaTech Limited does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the context of this e-mail or its attachments which arise as a result of Internet transmission, nor accept liability for statements which are those of the author and not clearly made on behalf of BMT SeaTech Limited. ======================================================================== == -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Sent: 20 April 2005 19:05 To: [email protected] Subject: Amanda vs Homegrown Well, I have spent a few days converting a client from a bunch of hand rolled scripts that rcp files all over the place, to amanda. All the while saying that this will be better, this is good, this is how it should work. Of course I couldn't complete it in a day, and there were issues of configuration. So now that I am mostly complete and am ready to put this project away..... The client comes in today and says "this is taking entirely too long (to get working), and I want a single piece of media with a full backup of everything and my scripts were working just fine".. To which I say, Uhhh, I mean I was dumbfounded, stopped in my tracks by such a ludicrous statement. So..... Does anyone have some good business case stuff or other verbage of a paragraph or three that I can use to convince this person that an actual backup program is better in all ways than hand rolled scripts, and that a full backup on a single piece of media may look attractive, but actually is not???
