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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?

5 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: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.