In my experience, most tape backup rotational schemes, fail to provide the
piece-of-mind that a nightly full backup provides. Consider what would
happen if your master tape fails for any reason (user error, tape breaks,
becomes unreadable, damaged, lost, stolen). It happens and it becomes a
true nightmare in a disaster recovery situation.
I advocate a full nightly backup. I agree speed is an issue, however this
is better served by upgrading your tape backup hardware to reach the desired
performance. I agree a true disaster recovery boot facility is important.
In summary, overall I like your ideas. I just think we would all be better
served if e-smith continued in it's direction to keep things simple. They
have stated they will offer FlexBackup and Taper as two options for backup.
These backups should provide a simple full backup and full restore. I made
a request that the reinstall disk feature be able to be saved and appended
onto a CDR e-smith ISO. This would provide for a built-in disaster recovery
reinstall using the one boot CD, the last backup tape and the included
FlexBackup/Taper software.
Beyond the above scope, I think 'experienced' users would be better served
implementing one of the many third-party backup products which offer many
more additional backup/restore/disaster recovery features.
Regards,
Darrell
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Smith, Jeffery S (Scott) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 8:53 AM
> To: 'Gordon Rowell'
> Cc: E-smith Devinfo
> Subject: RE: [e-smith-devinfo] Backup Software Choices
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Gordon Rowell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2001 10:18 AM
> > To: Charlie Brady
> > Cc: E-smith Devinfo; 'Brandon Friedman'
> > Subject: Re: [e-smith-devinfo] Backup Software Choices
>
> <snip>
>
> > And as Charlie said, we do not intend to dictate which
> backup software
> > people choose - the requirements are site-dependant. We want to
> > provide a simple, reliable nightly full backup for 4.1 and
> flexbackup
> > does that well.
>
> From way back in my SCO days... I used to use C-TAR, which is now
> BackupEDGE. Never had a lick of trouble with it, and the
> ability to boot a
> recovery disk, then restore the last master and incremental
> tapes was GREAT.
> I could restore a full system, including device files,
> symlinks, et al, will
> literally just a few keystrokes and an hour or two waiting
> for tapes to
> load. The biggest disadvantage was the restoration of files
> from the master
> that might have been deleted (ie, not reflected in the
> incremental.) I've
> been told, but have not witnessed, that this has been
> remedied in later
> versions through a tracking catalog.
>
> Is the flexbackup a true full backup (ie, the entire drive)
> or just a backup
> of the e-smith areas? If the former, then for restoration I'd like to
> suggest the concept of a boot disk or disks (already parially
> there with the
> reinstall disk) that have the flexbackup software, combined
> with a master
> (full) backup tape and nightly incremental (ie, changes only)
> tape. This
> makes the nightlies much faster and complicates the restore
> very little.
> Assuming, of course, this is possible with flexbackup.
>
>
> J. Scott Smith
> The Reynolds and Reynolds Company
>
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