Its back to technology again — after all thats why I started this blog. I really wish for that I could find some damned backup software that actually works as it is supposed to, reliably.
Right now I have two different pieces of backup software I use. In the local office we have Veritas. Its only backing up the server its on (to Tape). It works decently most of the time, but from time to time it will just stop. The backups are scheduled, and the tape is in the drive — but it just doesnt do anything. Nothing I do will fix it, short of rebooting the server. Since the server is the main server in the office for stuff like… exchange, I can’t do that just any old time.
Second piece of crap backup software I use is Retrospect 6.5, yes I realize thats an older version. I’ve been fiddling with the software on and off for the last 2 months without getting it to backup properly once. Plus it doesn’t let you launch multiple copies of the admin software like veritas does — so if someone else is running a backup (like say the scheduled backup launcher) and you open retrospect — you can either kill their session (and their backup) or … wait…. forever. The software really pisses me off because it “launches” the backup everynight as it should — then does nothing. Last time it sat for 3 days 9 hrs, and you know how much it backed up? NOTHING.
At one point in previous history, we wanted an “offsite” backup system. So I setup an apache webserver with compression on the files I needed to backup offsite. I also setup a machine “offsite” with a simple perl script that reads the file list and downloads each of the files using CURL (Since it supports compression). It emails me when its done. Guess what? Its less than 100lines of code, and it works.
Freaking hate commercial backup software. Never freaking works.