Introduction.

Creating a backup is an essential task that is often omitted because it is just too difficult.

With the availability of cheap storage on hard drives, and broadband Internet, it is now practical to back up over a network to a remote hard drive.

Software Packages.

Some software packages that leverages this option are : --

BackupNetClone (BNC)

So you want the perfect backup solution?! You've come to the right place. Though BackupNetClone isn't perfect, it does include the following key features:

• Scheduled -- you don't have to remember when to backup
• Hard drive backup media -- no disposable media (DVDs, tapes, etc that have to be "rotated") or recurring costs; also provides best dollar-per-byte ratio
• Commodity hardware (PC with hard drive running Linux) is used to the store the data (or a Linux-capable NAS device works well)
• Open source software (Linux) and open standards (ext2 or ext3 file systems) to store data -- doesn't tie you down to any particular brand or software/hardware
• Local or remote secure transfers -- well-suited for backup over the Internet (offsite) or within a network (onsite)
• Multiple targets ("backup clients") can be backed up onto one device ("backup server")
• Email status can be sent containing summary of what was backed up and how much space is left on backup device
• Multi-platform for the backup clients -- any PC (Mac OS X, MS Windows, Linux/UNIX) can be backed up
• "Snapshot" backups stored -- each contains a full copy of data for that moment in time, allowing you to revert back to any version of a file that has been previously backed up
• Incremental storage in the file system -- saves space by linking files that are identical, but also allows each snapshot to be independent of others so any snapshot can be deleted at any time
• Retrieve any file any time from any backup session -- files are not stored compressed or in a special format
• Completely free -- code is in the Public Domain

Zumastor Linux Storage Project

Zumastor is Free software that adds enterprise storage features (primarily improved snapshots and remote replication) to Linux.

You can read all about it in the Zumastor Howto. The current release is 0.8, which adds several bugfixes (in particular, replication between x86 and x86_64 hosts now works) and experimental native Hardy packages.

Prebuilt Debian/Ubuntu packages are available at zumastor.org/downloads/releases.

Zumastor development is hosted at zumastor.googlecode.com.