On Oct 4, 2006, at 11:10 AM, Stewart Stremler wrote:
So your OS, applications, encryption software, etc. shouldn't be encrypted, but your database backups probably should be. Of course, you shouldn't need to back up the former nearly as often as you do the latter.
Of course, if you're managing enough systems to warrant deployment/ provisioning infrastructure (Jumpstart/Kickstart) and policy/ configuration management (MS-SMS, cfengine, etc), you can approach the point of really not needing to back up the OS at all.
We're _close_, but not quite there, with our Linux systems. Machine died? Pull another, kickstart it, register it with RHN, fire off cfengine and restore your data. The only thing we haven't yet packaged up all nicely are things like Oracle Calendar and Matlab, which we still need to install the hard way on the workstations. We're working on a way to stuff those into RPMs, though.
This really lets us focus on the data we need to back up instead of trying to put ~70-80 systems worth of identical OS images to tape along with the data. It saves tape, it saves time, and it saves headaches.
As an aside, I remember being given a tour at a Windows shop (W2k at the time) with a full AD, Software Update Services (think patch management for MS software) and Systems Management Server rollout. I was honestly impressed with the amount of control they had over all the systems, and the ease with which they could bring up new desktops and servers. MS even has boot-from-net-and-install services now, whose name I can't remember. They seem to be learning from the Unix/ Linux people.
Gregory -- Gregory K. Ruiz-Ade <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> OpenPGP Key ID: EAF4844B keyserver: pgpkeys.mit.edu
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