[TriLUG] [Trilug-announce] Meeting, Thursday May 13 - Linux Backup Strategies

[Ben Pitzer]

Folks,

This is a topic that I know many of us are interested in, both from a
personal/home computing perspective, and from an enterprise perspective for
those of us who work as systems and network admins and who are responsible
for the integrity and safety of data on our networks.  It's important for
all computer users, irregardless of OS or skill level, because we've all
been burned before by losing important data, either by our own hand, or
thanks to mistakes made by friends, family or colleagues.

Therefore, I would like to request that we as a group ask some questions
beforehand here in the list that we would like to see covered in the
presentation that Jason and Jeremy will make.  If they're anything like me,
they haven't even started getting screen shots or making notes yet for this
presentation, but even if they have, perhaps it can help them with the
editing process, and let them know what we're wanting to hear about.  It
makes things easier on the presenters, and might shorten alot of the Q&A
following the meeting, allowing us a little more social time while still
getting our questions answered.

Therefore, I'll start with a few issues I'd like to see discussed:

1.  Cost.  It might be asking to much to get some $/GB guestimates for
hardware and media for backup solutions at the SOHO level, but some idea of
what to expect in terms of need is one of the first concerns in any backup
plan, IMHO.  Mainly, this is for folks who are not currently doing any kinds
of backups on their home machines, and are looking for ways to safely and
reliably backup data without breaking the bank.

2.  What needs backed up?  Discuss (with emphasis at least on the Big 3 in
our group, Red Hat, Mandrake, and Debian, but also maybe Gentoo and/or SuSE)
what types of information needs to be backed up, and at what intervals.
Obviously, this will depend on how the machine is used, but a discussion of
that type of thing might be helpful as well.

3.  Explore at least 2 different backup packages (tar and amanda, for
example, or even see if you can find some White Papers on Veritas NetBackup
for Linux).  The thing is that one package (say, amanda), while very slick
and very good at its task, is just too much for some users, while tar is
simply not enough for others.

4.  Now that we have the data backed up, how do we restore it in the event
of a system or component failure?  Having the data backed up is hardly any
good if we can't access it properly, and sometimes that means restoring one
part of a data set, while leaving another untouched.

I realize that this is alot of information to pack into a 20-30 minute
presentation, and I don't expect you to get to all of this.  Perhaps an idea
of whether you're planning on focusing on backups at the home/SOHO level, or
small to medium business environment beforehand might help people provide
better questions beforehand, and help you avoid questions about how well
OpenBSD on a Sparc IPX with an 150MB tape drive might be best used to do
nightly incremental back ups the family's home directories, or something
equally useless to the vast majority of the audience.

Looking forward to the presentation in any event, though, and have every
intention of being there.

Regards,
Ben Pitzer

---------------------------------------------

"Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
 --Ben Franklin--




> -----Original Message-----
> From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org]On
> Behalf Of Roy Vestal
> Sent: Monday, May 10, 2004 8:50 AM
> To: Trilug-announce at trilug.org
> Subject: [TriLUG] [Trilug-announce] Meeting, Thursday May 13 - Linux
> Backup Strategies
>
>
> Don't forget, this Thursday:
>
> The May meeting of the Triangle Linux Users Group (TriLUG) will
> be Thursday,
> May 13, 2004 at 7:00pm in Dreyfus Auditorium at RTI (directions available
> online: http://www.trilug.org). Our topic for the May meeting
> will be "Linux
> Backup Strategies" presented by our own TriLUG members Jason Tower and
> Jeremy Portzer. Come join us!  As always, the meetings are free, as is the
> pizza!
>
> Roy Vestal
> Public Relations/Outreach
> Triangle Linux Users Group (TriLUG)
>
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