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Ask Slashdot: Networked Back-Up/Wipe Process?

Posted by timothy on from the can-you-put-it-in-worm-form dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I am required to back up and wipe several hundred computers. Currently, this involves booting up each machine, running a backup script, turning the machine off, booting off a pendrive, and running some software that writes 0s to the drive several times. I was wondering if there was a faster solution. Like a server on an isolated network with a switch where I could just connect the computers up, turn them on and get the server to back up the data and wipe the drives." How would you go about automating this process?

6 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. Are you an hourly employee? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Then don't automate it.

    1. Re:Are you an hourly employee? by Mythran · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's just crap. "Lets be less efficient so we can get more money!" That's not the mindset devs or sysadmin should ever be in. I can't think of a career where less efficient just for greed is a good thing. Always strive to be better than what you are.

    2. Re:Are you an hourly employee? by hrvatska · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Even if hourly it's still worth it to automate it. If you're conscientious it will permit you to exceed expectations, which can be good for a raise or bonus. If all you care about is slacking off, if you automate it you'll have more time to slack off. Either way it would pay to automate.

  2. Re:Homebrew by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I kinda lean towards a linux PXE setup too.

    Debian FAI (Fully Automated Install) with all the needed setup, can run tasks and such, in a way that would work for you. It takes some setup (PXE/bootp/dhcp + NFS etc), but it's very capable, and might be practical if you need to do "thousands" of machines.

  3. DBAN? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As for a whole problem solution, I think you will need to do a bit of DIY. But just a note on the wipe process. Just writing 0 to the drive repeatedly will not ensure all the possibly sensitive data is non-recoverable, you really need to write random 1's and 0's at least 3 times to each bit of the drive. For that there is no better program than Derek's Boot And Nuke (DBAN) that I think is available as a liveCD and is available to several distros, including The Ultimate Boot CD (UBcd) and that may be a good place to start for a single boot backup, wipe solution. if you can write a shell script that can run from a pen drive while UBcd is in the CDbay.

  4. Use a screwdriver. by Scioccoballante · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Take the hard drives out of them, label them, and stick them in a closet.