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Ask Slashdot: Open Source Back-Up Tool For Business?
New submitter xerkot writes: I am looking for a tool to make backups of PCs in a big company. We want to replace the one that we are using at this moment for this new one. The tool will be used to do backups of PCs (mainly Windows, and a few Linux), and we want to manage these backups centrally from a console, being able to automatize the backup process. The servers of the company are backed up with another tool, so they are out of scope. In the company we are being encouraged more and more to use open source software, so I would like to ask you, what are best open source tools to do backups of PCs? Are they mature enough for a big company?
What exactly are you backing up? Entire disk images? Or just user files?
If disk images, then something like clonezilla, perhaps set up to boot from a TFTP server. Boot the machine via WOL, kick off the TFTP, automatically dump the image out to a server using the machine name or MAC address or something as a unique identifier
For user files only (ie, My Documents or whatever) can you set up network based home directories ? And then just back up the server they live on.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
you can use amanda in case you want to backup files. amanda is production grade and has clients for windows and linux and
possibly unix alike. -- mallah
I once was in a crossroads of choosing between stuff like Clonezilla and Bacula, for small business purposes. Bottom line is they add a lot of complexity for low to no flexibility. I ended up building my own tar/move/ script with cron triggers at after ours downtime, then I would simply move them around network locations for avoiding single points of failure messing up the backups. Adding your own exceptions for the backup is a plus. At the last point, I had something reliable, fast, and that would require the simple overhead of re-installing Debian before the actual restore, then an update-grub and a change in fstab for the new disk replacing the broken one's UUID (because you don't really do that many restores so it's a fair trade-off, while you do save time exponentially by not backing up the entire OS). A good starting point is http://www.aboutdebian.com/tar...
Open Source is not only an ideology, it is a tool to reduce the risk of dependencies on a single vendor. I found that his question is very valid if he wants to reduce vendor risk.
I use Bacula for my home computer; it feels powerful enough for a small office, and is very versatile.
It has three main components: a client daemon that you install on the computers you want to back up, a storage daemon that you install on the computer that will write the backup files and/or tapes, and a director daemon which controls the backups. The director and storage daemons only run on unix-like operating systems (BSD, Linux, Solaris) but the client daemon has also been built for MS-Windows.
http://blog.bacula.org/
I worked at a scientific institute, and they simply installed OwnCloud everywhere. It's got a client for most platforms, syncs to a server, and allows you to back up the server in the usual fashion.
It worked so well, that when I started doing consulting (at the client site), I got my own VPS with Debian, and installed OwnCloud server on that. Then installed the client on my private laptop and the laptop that I got from the client. Works beautifully, because communication is over HTTPS. Company firewalls don't block that. I tried other things like BitTorrent Sync, but these use special ports.
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There is as much abandoned OSS as abandoned closed commercial software.
The entire point of OSS licenses is that all software will be abandoned at some point.
OSS guarentees that you have a fighting chance to keep it working yourself or atleast migrate.
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No, that link was about a company throwing a fit and demanding that their bug be solved *immediately*
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Set up home drives on file servers and back those up. Teach users that those are the only locations that are backed up. Set up the PCs to use that as the default home location. You can do this on Windows and Linux just fine. Invest in the server -- redundant power supplies, RAID arrays, failover, etc. You could even look at various open source NAS devices, or whatever works for your environment.
Why?
Backing up user PCs doesn't scale well and becomes a thankless task for some poor employee who has to keep up with broken backup clients. It's far easier to scale when you only have to keep up with the file servers. You have some number of clients saving to each server, but that's that number of backup clients you don't need to deal with. This frees up IT staff for other, more useful tasks.
It also allows you to replace end-user PCs with a simple re-image rather than trying to recover or fix anything. End-user calls and says their PC is going whacko, you pull a spare off the shelf and lay down a fresh install. Show up, take the malfunctioning equipment away and diagnose it on your time, while they get back to work. Since all the files are on the server they can just get back to it rather than waiting on you to try and fix whatever might be going wrong.
Seconding this. In the companies I work with, this is the solution we've put into place. Windows PCs use mapped network drives for personal folders and shared folders to a server. The server runs ZFS as its file system. Simple cron scripts on the server itself automate the process of creating snapshots and doing send/receive with other servers both inside and outside the building. These additional machines also store a certain number of snapshots, so we can recover previous versions of files easily. ZFS + Samba 4 also appears to Windows as "Volume Shadow Copy", so snapshots also become browsable directly by Windows clients for the more technical users who know how to work with it.
The great thing about this strategy is that 1) you're not installing a single thing on client machines, just an initial config for mapped network drives. 2) next to nothing to install on the server machine, just ZFS and Samba (which both come with FreeNAS if you want a very simple drop-in solution)
I see you've been living under a rock and never heard of these things called patent trolls, or SCO, or Oracle.
And how, pray tell, are any of those entities going to find out about your private little contract with a vendor to fix your particular instance of whatever code?
Software audits. Oracle and Microsoft are famous for going on-site and sifting through computers looking for non-compliance. Non-compliance doesn't only mean using unauthorized copies of software, it also means unauthorized use of authorized software. And if that isn't enough, the DMCA can be used on you for reverse-engineering a product in order to modify or augment it. It also tends to "void the warranty" on your legitimate uses.
Open Source isn't necessarily the Solution to Everything, but most OSS has a license that explicitly permits customization for private use, at least. And no one's going to come around auditing it.
Really? "as much"? Wasn't there a /. story two days ago about an OSS dev not interested in supporting his own app unless he got paid?
There's got to be waay more OSS abandonware than closed source because the proprietary people get paid for their work and therefore work hard to make sure the money keeps flowing in. Whereas the OSS guy quits after he's satisfied scratching his itch and there's nothing new left to explore/clone.
I doubt it. I have shelves full of commercial "abandonware". Mostly just in case I need to fire up an antique system for the sole purpose of dealing with some dust-ridden data. At least with OSS, you can usually get the source and do something with it. If a commercial product is truly abandoned and the vendor is defunct, you've got to reverse-engineer it and hope patent/copyright laws aren't going to get you. If it's something worse - like an OS/2 version of a Norton/Symantec product, you can basically give it up, unless you have enough cash to make them listen. And for some products/vendors, that would have to be a lot of cash indeed. Think about Windows XP and various world governments, for example.