[Box Backup] Backuping inversely

[Stuart Hickinbottom]

Have you considered BackupPC (http://backuppc.sourceforge.net)? That 
keeps administration central, supports full and incremental backups, and 
has the neat feature of spotting files common to multiple clients to 
avoid duplication in the storage pool. It's also tolerant of client 
machines that come and go from the network. It also has a nice web 
interface for clients to browse backups and restore individual files or 
folder trees.

You'd need to secure network comms with something like SSL or SSH, and 
you'll need to allow access to the clients from the server (Windows 
domain authentication is possible, as is distributing an SSH key to the 
clients that only allows the server in).

It's fundamentally different to box, though, in that you have to trust 
the server.

I'm using it for a small isolated network of machines I manage - I suck 
their data onto the server with BackupPC, then just back the server up 
with Bacula. This means I don't need to have all the client machines 
there and switched on in order to get a good backup.

Stuart

Pablo Fernandez wrote:
> Hi
>
>
>
> On Fri, 2008-01-25 at 23:18 +0000, Chris Wilson wrote:
>
>   
>> Why do you want to keep a schedule in the first place? Why not just let 
>> the clients stream backups at their own speed, when they want to? The 
>> server should be perfectly capable of handling that.
>>     
>
> This would allow you to set and manage backup policies from a
> centralized place. Think bacula director. Think for example in the case
> where backup is modeled as SaaS and clients are the one that are not
> supposed to dictate their policy. Given a scenario like this where SLAs
> are subject to contracts a central management or some sort of control is
> quite important.
>
>   
>>> I like the assumption that the server is unsecure, but I think what is 
>>> mostly unsecure is the storage, not the server itself, as long as the 
>>> data is only accessible to the client I don't think it would be a 
>>> negative impact to allow the server to control when backups are made.
>>>       
>> I think it adds complexity and I can't see myself using it, but if others 
>> are interested as well then I'll certainly consider it. Patches would also 
>> be accepted :-)
>>     
>
> I think this would add to the scalability of the project. I've been
> looking into a rather large amount of solutions including leaders like
> Amanda and Bacula and Box Backup is definitely on a great path, I just
> think it lacks a few things very important for large networks where
> maintainability is a big issue.
>
> Best regards,
> Pablo
>
>
>   
>> Cheers, Chris.
>>     
>
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