Introduction

backup

Every company runs a backup environment … or at least they should do that

A typical backup environment consists of a backup server, backup devices and media, backup clients and at least one network to connect the components. One collects backup data with the backup client on the system which should be protected. These data are sent to the backup server which stores them on backup media on a backup device. This may be a disk, tape or virtual tape. The backup server also manages a database were meta information about the backups are stored.

restore

Is there a reason for doing backups? Hell, yes!!! There is a main reason: You probably want to be able to restore your important data in case of a failure. Of course you also want to keep IT staff in business

O.k., at least there’s one guy who is not doing backup but doesn’t have to be afraid of loss of data… Linus Torvalds

test environment

Lots of firms don’t have a test environment for backup/restore. With this article I will show you how to install and configure a small test backup environment for free.

O.k., you will need a PC with some GB free disk space, but that’s all.

Networker

EMC Networker, formerly known as Legato Networker, is one of the leading backup products. There are serveral advanced options like doing online backups for databases.

You can download latest Networker releases here on this FTP server. Networker will run 30 days without limits after installation.

You will get more infos about Networker in EMC Networker Online community. There is also a great blog by Preston who also wrote a very good book about backup/restore:
Enterprise Systems Backup and Recovery: A Corporate Insurance Policy

MHVTL

MHVTL is an open source virtual tape library (VTL) for Linux. Yes, it’s free! You can simulate a real tape library. You will love it There’s also a forum.

VirtualBox

Oracle VirtualBox is a software which is able to simulate another operating system within your running OS. VBox is freely available for Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac Os X.

You can get ready to use os-images for VBox. The images are compressed. Use 7zip or p7zip to uncompress.