Kevin,
Backup of the OS and programs to CD is fine. They don't change every day.
Just make it easy for non-technical people to use when you are not around.
Create scripts that will work reliably for you and your operators to backup,
verify, and restore.
Now for the scary part. Restore.
Years ago, I worked with a UNIX system that made 8 mm tape backups every day
and pushed one for monthly archive. On Friday the 13th, it happened, our
hard drive crashed and we had to restore. It was a disaster. Installing new
drive and getting it online took hours and then the nightmare began... Tapes
were unreadable or so full of errors that they were unusable. They reused 10
tapes for backups over three years and never added new or replaced worn
tapes. They never verified the tapes or tested a restore.
What made it even worst was, no one had done a restore before. People who
created the restore had left the company and did not answer pleas for help.
It was a very bad scene. It took them Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to piece
the system back together. They were lucky that the drive died Friday and
they lost only that business day.
Moral of this "war story" is if you use a media, verify it and refresh old
or warn items with new. Test the restore procedure before you need them -
don't assume it will work, because it won't. Take the time to plan and
execute restores with as many workers as you can standing by. Let them all
learn how to restore and understand what has to be done and when. This is
your insurance when some of them move on or leave you.
At the dentist office we have 5 people trained on restore procedures. Even
the dentist understands the procedure and has tested it at home.
Bill
From: "Kevin Fogleman" <snotr0cket@home.com>
> Ah, I can see where I was wrong in this. When I was suggesting using a CD
> burner, at the time I was thinking about what we were going to be doing at
> the office, namely just burning the OS and all the config files and such
> onto CD so that it could be instantly restored in the event of a disk
> failure, without the office people knowing how to use Linux.
>
> They (allegedly) do a tape backup of all the critical files over the
> network every day on one of the workstations that has a tape drive. Then
> they lock the tapes (again, allegedly. The woman who is supposed to do
> this is the same one who just yanked the plug out of her computer to turn
> it off before I showed her the "off" button) in a fire-proof safe and keep
> 'em for a week. I don't think they've ever had to do a restore with them,
> so I have no idea how reliable this actually is.
> --
> --Kevin Fogleman
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