[SunHELP] looking for backup ideas

[Edward Chase]

Hello all,

I'm looking for backup ideas.  My current scheme is that each of my servers 
have a tape drive in it.  A few of the less critical machines create a tar 
files of the important stuff and another machine collects the tar files via 
cron entries and perl scripts.

Our department is now facing space issues, we need to add machines but 
don't have any new space to put them.  We're now looking into replacing 
tower case machines with rackmounted 1U units, but those things don't come 
with tapedrives, at least none I've looked at so far.

I currently have a mix of linux boxes and Solaris boxes.

I'm eyeing the setup that our Novell administrator has here.  He's got a 
few backup servers which go out and backup other servers each night.  He's 
using ArcServe.

I see that there is a linux version of ArcServe.  I'm guessing that I could 
run a linux box w/ ArcServe on it to backup my other linux boxes, but what 
about my Sun boxes?

Is there some product that runs on either Solaris or linux that can be used 
to backup other boxes?  I'd like the "backup" server to run the show, not 
have the remote servers tar to the backup servers tape drive.  I don't want 
to have to worry about having 2 machines trying to tar to the drive at the 
same time.

Am I making sense?


---------------------------------------------------------------
  Edward F. Chase III     |   echase at providence.edu
  Providence College      |   http://www.providence.edu
  Computer Services       |   http://studentweb.providence.edu
  Providence, RI  02918   |