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Using Linux for Windows HD Snapshots?
DBordello asks: "Our company is currently backing up weekly to tape. I would like to begin taking snapshots of our NT 4.0 server. My first thought was a Linux box running an Open Source solution. My research shows that most Open Source applications to take snapshots assume that the backup target is Linux based. This presents a problem with mounting the NT 4.0 server. While I could mount the share with Samba, all of the backup applications do not provide options to backup a local mount. What do you guys use to snapshot your Windows network?"
hdup should do the job. Simple, does monthly/weekly/daily and compression + encryption if you wish.
Mount your NT filesystem via samba, specify your mounted directories to backup, put a crontab entry, that should be it.
I use it daily to store a backup file on a the same host as the filesystem backuped - then fetching it using rsync with another machine for archival purposes.
Won't keep NT permissions automatically, you should backup relevant permission files for Windows (anybody knows what they are?)
Linux has a driver for NTFS already. Last time I looked, it was read-only, but that should suit you perfectly.
I don't know how far you have researched this, but if you are running RedHat Linux 7.x, 8.0, or 9 you already have a solution with Amanda.
Backup of Microsoft Windows machines happens via Samba shares of course, and it will run in agent or agentless mode.
Agent mode of course gives you things like bandwidth throttling and compression of the network bandwidth usage. Agentless mode and you can back up anything you can mount.
Typically you can have it use the smbtar(1) command (from Samba) to have it backup your windows machine.
The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
With dd you can make a "snap shot" of any imaginable partition. No need to mount it. Just write dd if=/dev/hdc10 of=/root/backups/hdc10-`date -Is` or something similar, and it's done. I wish you good luck.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
No. It just means that you have to make a partition of at least the same size on the new hard drive, as on the old one. The new hard drives are usually larger, so it's not a problem at all. First use dd to back up the partition and record it on a new hard drive using fdisk (or cfdisk if yu cannot use a simple CLItool) first to make a new partition of the same type and size, and then dd again to write the actual data. It's just that simple.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
You could at least try to be on topic, you know. Saying something like, use dd and your hard drive images will last as long as Strom Thurmond. Or, you need to keep your Windows backups segregated from your Linux backups, just like Strom Thurmond would have done. C'mon, try it, it's fun.
Not that I've used it extensively yet (maybe someone else has) but Ghost 4 Unix (g4u) will do a bit for bit copy just like Ghost for Windows does, difference being that it is freeware and backs up to any ftp server with the appropriate credentials added. I think I'll go ahead and try it a little more this weekend actually.
Here is a link to g4u.
Cliff
sigs are like a box of chocolates, they all suck remove the underscores to email me
I am currently facing the same problem; here is my solution:
A couple of weeks ago, I convinced my boss to let me replace our entire windows network (workstations; all servers are *nix) with diskless Linux workstations (Gentoo/OpenOffice/Evolution/Mozilla), all participating in a big happy openmosix cluster!!!
(our builds will be speedy-speedy now!!!)
So, my backup procedure will be:
Step 1)back up the NFS server with the users' home dirs
Step 2)Drink BEER!!!!
>Is that some kind of joke?
No. I'm beginning to think you haven't worked with tools like ghost yet...
If I have a 220 GB HDD, but only 50 GB of data, and the drive explodes in flames and all I have left is a spare 80 GB drive, with your method, I'm screwed.
With something like ghost, you aren't. You just put the image on the new drive, and wait until you get some drive space. And, as an added benefit, you get complete defragmentation, too.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
BackupPC.
Partimage makes an "intelligent" copy of a partition. I.e., it only copies the sectors that actually contain data. This gives a smaller backup than a full copy of the disk.
It can read NTFS partitions, and it can connect to a remote server to store the file.
They even provide bootable disk images, so you can use it without installing Linux on the NT machine.
WWTTD?
you dont!
:-)
Has anybody experiences with Bacula? An NT client is available, the server side is on **ix.
:-)
Just found it today, so I can't give any comments, but at least their claim is cool:
"It comes by night and sucks the vital essence from your computers."
Especially interesting would ba a comparison to Amanda.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
http://unattended.sourceforge.net/
Not sure if it is what you are searching for though (it would not backup data)
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
Hey, don't mock me. I just spent all night spastically jerking my mouse around and uploading all of my music to various FTP servers just to be able to eek 200MB from /dev/random. Now I just need to find a way sell it.
Should be superior intellect. I can't even get it right.
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?