On Tue, May 28, 2002 at 02:50:02PM -0500, Raymond Norton wrote:
>I need to implement a reliable backup system using tape. So far I have not
>tried installing a tape drive, or scsi card on my  Redhat box. Before I
>start spending money I was hoping to get recommendations on what hardware
>to use. It would be ideal if the same system could backup 2 Linux servers,
>and one NT box. I don't want to flood this list with oodles of questions,
>so it would be great if I could communicate with someone via email through
>the install and config process.

Any SCSI card supported by linux kernel (I have always had good luck with
adaptec)
Nearly ANY Tape drive will suffice, some tape libraries have odd changers
that can sometimes be a pain to setup.

For software use amanda, it's free, easy to use and will do what you need.
Basically you install the amanda software on each machine. The main server
asks for the data that the planner thinks it needs from each disk on the
client nodes (the server itself can be a client) you set the priority and
compression level for each disk that needs to be backed up. It stores that
info on a holding disk then dumps it to tape when it has a chance.
Restoring is very cool. You go to the client machine, login as root, run
amrecover with a couple options and it drops you to an ftp like shell, you
can cd around and select the files and directories you want. then
essentially you tell it "go" and it says "Hrm, you need tape $FOO" you put
in tape $FOO and tell it "Yahtzee" and it starts restoring your stuff.

Very cool.

-- 
Ben Lutgens				 | http://people.sistina.com/~blutgens/	
System Administrator	 | http://www.sistina.com/
Sistina Software Inc. | 

"I got a wife and kids too but you don't see me out here stealing Imperial
Droids now do ya?"
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