need help on strategy

[brising]

I've rolled all this around in my head too long, but not come up with a good solution.

 

 

 

I'm running Retrospect Workgroup on my Mac (OS X 10.2.1) to backup both my machine and six other machines (2 Windows 98 and 4 Windows 2000). One of the six machines is a laptop.

 

 

 

I'd like a strategy which will require the smallest amount of media tracking possible. I'm used to using Retrospect on just my machine with a backup script which howls at me when I have the wrong tape inserted, and which takes care of the recycle backups without any thought from me. I'd like something close to this which is flexible for my coworkers.

 

 

 

Initial thought: I should be running a backup server to backup the other machines and running scheduled backups for my own machine. The backup server hardly interferes with my work, even when backing up, and it makes life the easiest for my 6 coworkers. Using a scheduled backup on my machine will help with the media rotations.

 

 

 

Does this make any sense, or is there a better way to go about this?

 

 

 

I suppose I could put my machine on the backup server script, but this would mean that I would have to track the media myself (bad).

 

 

 

I could also play sysadmin nazi and tell everybody that their machines would get backed up at night only, and only if they left them on. (not great).

 

 

 

Does anyone have a nice, time-tested way of working in this situation? I've read the Retrospect manual X times (where X is large), without being able to come up with a plan.

 

 

 

Thanks in advance for any tips,

 

 

 

Bill

[AmyJ]

Your plan seems viable. Using a backup server script in conjunction with regular scripts (for recycling and rotating media) will give you the security of knowing everyone is getting backed up, and that you're seeing obvious requests for media.

 

 

 

You could put yourself in the backup server script, and make "dummy" standard scripts for recycling media - something that would only backup a file or a folder on a regular basis.

 

 

 

In reply to:

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I could also play sysadmin nazi

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Is that anything like the soup nazi? "No backup for you!"

 

 

 

We have a white paper on backup guidelines that you may find useful:

 

 

 

http://www.dantz.com/about/press/white_papers.html

[brising]

Thanks for the reply. The idea of a dummy standard script sounds like something to keep in mind.

 

 

 

As for the sysadmin nazi, that's an undeserved moniker for most sysadmins, but suitable for many whose first answer to any question is "no", "can't be done", or "I don't have time". (As in "No, we won't back up personal computers, we don't work that way here. Besides, it would take too much time.")

 

 

 

Bill