Network-based Encrypted Backup in 15 Minutes

Amanda writes "Many of us plan for mundane (but important) tasks like setting up backup during long weekends. Much of it is because of complexity and cumbersome nature of the tasks involved. This article shows how to quickly and securely set up a network-based backup, all using freely downloadable software tools like Amanda, Samba and Tar."

Comments

15 minutes?!? There's a catch.

[sakusha]

The catch is, it's supposed to take 15 minutes to SET UP the backup system, not to actually PERFORM the backup.

I suspect it will be a long time before I have a fast enough network connection to back up my (90% full) 950Gb RAID over a network in 15 minutes. And then there's the issue of the CPU horsepower required to encrypt all those hundreds of gigs of data. And come to think of it, this system doesn't really have any way to test if the backup actually WORKS, other than by restoring it to the primary system and wiping out the original data. And you know what will happen if you restore a hosed backup over your live production system.

I think this is dangerous advice....

[gweihir]

It seems to me that the 15 minuten setup guide does neither do nor stress the importance of comparing the backup to the original after it has been written. Comparison serves two purposes:

a) Make sure your backup is readable
b) Make sure your backup decrypts and is equal to the original data

Especially b) is often not the case due to RAM errors and other problems. With encryption a single bit-error after encryption can make your whole file permanently unreadable. a) can be violated by a number of things, but when you need that backup, it is too late to find out.

Never, ever do backup without full compare afterwards! From time to time do a full restoration to other hardware to be sure you know how to do it and that it works!

Seems to me this is really worth only the 15 minutes you need to put into it. But it can give you a dangerou, false sense of having understood how to do good backups.