Backing up several Windows machines to a Linux server

[Michael D. Setzer II]

On 21 Jan 2005 at 16:49, Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:

From:           	"Rodolfo J. Paiz" <rpaiz at simpaticus.com>
To:             	fedora-list at redhat.com
Date sent:      	Fri, 21 Jan 2005 16:49:44 -0600
Subject:        	Backing up several Windows machines to a Linux server
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> Hi:
> 
> I am faced with what *must* be a very common task: to make backups of
> user files on several Windows machines to the hard disk of a Linux
> server. So far I've only been responsible for backing up the servers,
> and rsync/rsnapshot plus mondo do a beautiful job of that.
> 
> However, I am finding it a little difficult to find software that does
> this well. I do prefer to support open-source if at all possible, and I
> do prefer zero-cost as this is a small office; but I am able and willing
> to pay for software as long as the cost is reasonable.
> 
> Here's what I've done so far:
> 
> 	1. Amanda (http://www.amanda.org) only seems to do backups to tape,
> yuck! I definitely want to back up to a hard drive: much faster and much
> cheaper, and I can then replicate the data store and take it home on my
> notebook. :-) At most we will have 10GB or 20GB of backups, not
> terabytes or anything huge.
> 
> 	2. Given that the clients are Windows and I need to automate backups
> (else they'll never get done), I don't see how I can use rsync and/or
> similar tools since they don't run on that OS. It seems to me that I
> need some sort of a client app on Windows that will push the backups to
> the server. Happy to be corrected if wrong, of course.
> 
> 	3. Bacula (http://www.bacula.org) *looks* pretty complete, but it also
> looks pretty confusing and complex to set up. It also speaks of
> difficulties backing up Windows clients. Not very attractive at first
> sight... does anyone know if it gets easier/nicer later?
> 
> 	4. Arkeia (http://www.arkeia.com) seems to do the trick. Clients for a
> lot of operating systems, server runs on Linux, even has plug-ins for
> backing up LDAP, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and others. Waiting for a price
> quote from them now, hopefully it will be affordable.
> 
> Can I get some help/recommendations here? Any five-star products I've
> missed? Especially any really good, pretty cheap ones?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> -- 
> Rodolfo J. Paiz <rpaiz at simpaticus.com>
> 
> -- 
> fedora-list mailing list
> fedora-list at redhat.com
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> 
What exactly are you backing up?
A system that I use for my students using open lab machines, is to 
have a program that downloads a zip file of the files from my Linux 
machine, unzip it to there directory. Then when they finish, it rezips 
and uploads the files. 

You could create a script that would zip whatever files you are to 
backup, and then use something like ncftp to upload the zip file. 
Only problem with this, is that a delete file will disappear for the 
backup, but if you copy the files from the server to a different 
directory from time to time, you can handle these loses as well.

If you are talking about making a full backup of the whole drive, G4U 
and G4L are both free programs that can make images to an FTP 
server or the drives or partitions. But these are large files, and take 
time. I'm used a modified version of G4L that has more options, and 
can use non-anonymous ftp access. It takes a little over 2 hours to 
make a disk image of an 80GB drive to a single 12GB file using gzip 
compression. Takes about 1 hour and 40 minutes to restore the 
images to machine. Norton Ghost was a little faster, but 2003 
version doesn't work with the Fedora partitions with FC3. The lab 
has 98, XP, and FC3 on the machines. Ghost worked with RH9 thru 
FC2.



+----------------------------------------------------------+
  Michael D. Setzer II -  Computer Science Instructor      
  Guam Community College  Computer Center                  
  mailto:mikes at kuentos.guam.net                            
  http://www.guam.net/home/mikes
  Guam - Where America's Day Begins                        
+----------------------------------------------------------+

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