[X4U] Since we're on the subject of backups...

[Jesse Leo]

Anyone have any suggestions for a small business backup plan? Our current
system basically boils down to this:

- about 14 Macs and 2 Windoze PCs.

- A really old version of Retrospect (which is now owned by some other
company and is no longer supported).

- Retrospect grabs the Entourage database (I know, I know...), iCal files
and desktop of each node every night (incrementals nightly, full on
weekends). It also backs up the file server (itself).

- Backups done to 3 FW external drives in a rotation. One is always offsite
in a safe at the boss' house.

So far, so good. The system works reasonably well. But here are the
problems:

1) We're probably going to be getting a brand new file server soon running
Leopard Server. I doubt that old-school version of Retrospect will work.

2) Disaster recovery - Retrospect doesn't do a file-to-file backup. It makes
catalog files. So I think this means that in a file server disaster we would
have to first install Retrospect on another computer and then attempt a
restore. This kind of sucks.

So anyway, I would love to hear if anyone has any thoughts/suggestions on
this. Understandably this may be fodder for a different mail list, but I
thought I'd ask...


Thanks,
Jesse