Fri, 21 Nov 2008

Dear Lazyweb,

I have several Linux systems (mostly workstations) which are in desperate need of a backup solution. However the "official" backup server runs Windows 2003. It's out of a questions to migrate that to a better system.

Now I'm wondering about a good backup strategy... and am failing to find a working software. Constraints: I want' to have weekly full backups and daily incremental backups. I would like to have a central service, where I can see if some machines haven't been backed up for some time (ideally I would like to get a mail, if a machine hasn't been backed up for some time). It would be nice if I didn't need to install any special software on the systems to be backed up; but if it can't be done otherwise so be it.

I have the resources to set up an additional Linux systems, but due to various circumstances the hard discs I can use in that machine are not very reliable. Therefore backups must end on the Windows system; either directly or via cifs / network share.

So far I have looked at BackupPC which seems very nice, but depends on a file system supporting hard links. Which isn't the case here :(

Bacula seems a bit overkill, but better to much functionality than missing functionality ;) However, Bacula needs a Database, and I wouldn't know where to set up that. As said, the local Linux system which would run the backup server might have a disc crash, therefore the database should run somewhere else. Bacula may use SQLite as database; where I could store the SQLite files on the Windows server via network share, however the Bacla Documentation doesn't recommend using SQLite on a production environment.

I looked at amanda, too; but honestly I didn't understood the documentation very well :(

So much for the first ideas... Any good pointers where I should go next? I know, it's a quiet unusual scenario, but there must be some kind of solution, mustn't it?

postet at 22:07 into [Debian] permanent link