On Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 09:13:30PM -0500, Chuck Thompson wrote:
>> Could you please do a very short writeup for me on laptop backups? What
>> we’ve been doing, what works and doesn’t work about it and a few references
>> to the alternative solutions you’ve explored? Thanks.

Laptops are tricky:
– they’re not online overnight or at set times and when they are…
– they could be disconnected from the network at any time
– they can be on transient networks/modems with changing IPs and speeds
– they may have the only copy of critical data
– they tend to fail when people are far from home or really need them
– people put a ton of personal data on laptops (music, dvds, HD camera
videos) — it’s hard to tell what’s important to backup and not
– laptops have poor i/o systems, meaning backups impact performance
more than on desktops and it makes it harder to use the laptop while a
backup is running.
– If a laptop is on, it’s probably running the applications the user
needs, which means files are open, and they may not be backed up
(Outlook PST files for example)

So they introduce problems:
– How do you schedule laptop backups?
– How do you identify backup clients w/ changing networks?
– How can a user do a restore remotely, at odd times without IT support?

Legato doesn’t handle laptop backups well because:
– Networker needs a set scheduled time to run and that doesn’t suit
all users
– Users can’t trigger manual backups when it suits them
– It needs a static IP, meaning the laptop needs to be on the wired
network
– Any tape drive/server issues can get out of the ‘noon’ window when we
do our backups, and I have to kill the group
– Legato had a Networker Laptops product (was OEM’d from connected.com)
but end-of-lifed it a while ago and it’s never talked about on the
Networker list I lurk

My observations:
– Snapshots are more important than daily backups (”I’m going on a trip
tomorrow, I want a backup” is very common)
– Server initiated backups are hard; client initiated is better
– Laptop backups should happen quickly (good candidate for D2D backups)

Some other alternatives:
BackupPC (backuppc.sourceforge.net)
– OSS, Perl-based, runs over smb, rsync, ssh/tar
– no tape support – only to disk
– can be clientless (no open file support)
– web based administration/restores
– “pools” the same file from multiple systems to reduce storage costs
– users can trigger full/incremental backups
– users can restore from web remotely
– scheduling based on last backup (backup policies) rather than
calendar scheduling (if there hasn’t been a backup in 24 hours, try to
do one every hour until you can; do a full if there hasn’t been one in
the last three weeks)
– good email notifications
– uses differential/full model

EMC Dantz Retrospect (www.dantz.com)
– Windows/Mac server, clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris
– uses disk and mssql to hold data
– tape and optical drive support
– some open file support
– good user interface
– user can trigger backups
– more flexible scheduling than Networker (I hope)
– backup can adjust based on connection speed
– user can do a backup to local disk that gets uploaded to server later
(for version control when offline)
– has registry/system restore functions
– much cheaper than Networker
– uses differential/full model
– web or client based restore

(edit: took out the pre tags)