Microsoft Releases Public Beta of Data Protection
Torrey Clark writes "Microsoft has released the public beta of its disk-to-disk backup product, Data Protection Manager. The product is designed to make backups easier than simply backing up to tape. Disk-to-disk backup completes images in significantly less time, meaning much less downtime for systems during backups."
Don't know about the rest of the world but we don't have to take systems down to backup them here.
The really surprising thing is that they released the source code, and here it is:
/d/s/e/c/f/h/k/y
xcopy *.* "x:\"
So it seems DPM is only a "data-mover", so it will need to be combined with another technology, after some research i found this:
StoreAge Networking Technologies announced that it will be developing enhanced solutions to support Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager
The full article is: here
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
We've been doing disk-to-disk for a year or so now using rsync's --link-dest feature to create apparently complete mirrors each night, but with only those changed files actually occupying disk space (beyond that of a symlink). Makes restoration an absolute breeze compared to tape, but I'm not sure if this M/S effort does the same? *runs off to look*
Disk to disk backup would require the system to be shutdown, drive added, removed and reboot, configure etc.
Unless they are talking about removable media like CD/DVD/USB devices, this does not make sense.
There are such things as USB hard drives which appear as volumes within the Windows OS, you know. I use such a unit with a cheapo exchangeable ATAPI cartridge bay hacked into it for backup. I call it "tepid-swap"; it's not true hotswap as I have to "stop" the USB device before switching it off but I certainly don't have to shut down the entire system to change the drive fitted in the bay. After I power it up again Windows 2000 automatically recognises the new disk, no reboot necessary.
"Please insert disk 2 of 1,270,196 in drive A: and click continue"
I've recently been using Subversion as a backup solution at home with great success.
My server runs it's own SVN repository and each of my machines can check in it's important files into the tree.
This backup solution is quick and thanks to tools like TortoiseSVN integrates into the desktop for ease of use.
Additional bonus factors are the ability to see the revision history, roll-back, full cross-platform support.
You can also manage multiple copies of the same file to multiple machines should you need to work on them or just want additional resilience.
The real icing of the cake of course is that you can run it over SSL via Apache or over SSH and therefore remotely access your backed-up files from out on the Internet should you suddenly need an invoice or a photograph while sitting in a net cafe in a foreign country.
Oh, and it's free by both definitions. http://subversion.tigris.org
[)amien