Back it on up
While an absolute necessity data backups can often be a real hassle. In an attempt to simplify the management of data backups for our corporate systems I came across the open source solution of BackupPC.
The initial setup of the backup server on my Ubuntu 8.04 Server, was pretty easy. The included configure.pl install script pretty much handles all the heavy lifting for setup. All that is left is the backup machines configuration. The good news, you don't have to go to each individual machine to install any client or special software, and it works equally as good on windows or linux. (Although I've so far only configured for windows boxes so far. After you add the name/IP of the "host" machine (i.e. the computer that you are wanting to backup) you have go to the "select a host" drop down menu and click the one you want.
The main screen is fairly unimposing and will give you an easy snapshot of how backups have been going; that is it will once you've configured everything correctly. When you choose the Edit Config option from the host screen, the array of configuration options and settings may take you aback. It certainly did me, especially since I wasn't sure what a most of the options were even talking about. But have no fear, that's what documentation is for. And BackupPC has some comparatively good documentation for any open source project.
I could go into the minutia of my specific configuration settings, but that will be for another time. Needless to say, I am so far a fan (as I've only had it running for 2 weeks and have yet to try to implement a restore on anything, I will leave a definitive judgment until later.
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