Re: [Hampshire] Open source network backup with de-dupe.

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 09:15:23 +0100 (+0100), James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> > I've come to the conclusion that there aren't any decent open source
> > backup products.  Yes, I do actually have it on my todo list to write
[snip]
> So, in summary, it is not good enough to replace the system currently
> at my customer's that cost over £100000 !

There's a good reason they can charge 100K :-)

VSS and other snapshotting technologies (particularly those built into
decent storage arrays) are the way forward if you can afford it.

Being able to take snapshots every few minutes and sync them to a
remote datacentre really is rather nice :D See also "continuous data
protection".

TBH my personal attitude is that snapshots are great for box restores,
file level are good for digging out a single file. Good sysadmin
practice should almost remove the need to ever use backups in
enterprise environemnts. Testing on pre-production environments then
rolling out onto production boxes (or flip-flopping environments where
you clone A to B, upgrade B, then flip the service over to B) works a
treat.

Backups then become emergency only "oh crap, we've been hacked" and/or
"database is corrupted" and it's an issue of how much loss of data
you can afford time wise.

Adrian
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