Lately we’ve been looking at backup solutions at work.

And I’ve got to say that Bacula is looking downright awesome. It’s GPL’d and it has just about every feature a person could ask for.

I am a complete Bacula newbie. Today, after using Bacula for a total of about 30-60 minutes, I added the first client machine to my Linux test box. The client machine was running the Windows bacula client. It took about 10 minutes to install and configure the client and the server. And both backup and restore worked perfectly the first time. Nice. Setting up a *nix client is even easier.

I’ve been using Amanda for many years at home and at various workplaces. Looks like we’re going to be switching.

We’ve also ordered an HP MSL4048, a 48-tape LTO3 library with barcode support. Each tape has a native storage capacity of 400GB. Should be nice when it arrives. With that library and Bacula, we should be able to back up all our servers using a single backup system. And both our Windows and Unix people can manage the system, including running restores to any machine, from any authorized console machine.