Integrating Backup for a Multiple Operating System Network with Amanda

Edward L. Haletky

If you have a network of disparate operating systems, and a single tape drive, how do you back up your important data? The sample network discussed in this article consists of Apple Macintosh, Linux, Windows 2000, and various flavors of Linux and UNIX. Also, due to disk space limitations, there cannot be a single file server, and there is operating system-specific configuration data that cannot be stored on a single file server. Given a single DDS-3 tape drive, how do you back up the multiple file systems and configuration data required? There are several available options, but the Amanda backup tool (“Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver”) provides the requirements for backing up the file systems and configuration data. This article describes how I used Amanda to organize backups on a complex heterogeneous network. For more on Amanda and how to configure it, see the “Backing Up the Network with Amanda,” by David T. Smith (Sys Admin, April 2002).

Background

My home office has a network of various computers including those running MacOS 8, Windows 2000, Tru64 Unix, IRIX, and various forms of UNIX for PCs including Linux and BSDi. However, there is only one tape drive to back up all these systems. My first solution was to designate critical versus non-critical systems and only back up the critical systems. This raised the issue of where to place the tape drive. Should I carry it from machine to machine, or use only one machine?

Initially, I used only one machine and, via remote copies, NFS, and AppleTalk shares, I backed up what was considered to be the critical data (user files and operating system configuration data).