Backup solution for freeBSD/Symantec Backup exec porting

[Ian Lord]

Hi,

I've been using freebsd since version 4.11 and always dealt with backup semi manually with dump, copying files over, database dumps, etc.

By the way, not as a home user, but for 8-10 servers used in a SAAS application. We are looking for something more serious as we are dealing with about 10TB of data for documents, and 600-800 gigs of SQL database. Everything is redundant, replicated, etc, but we need a serious backup solution.

We are thinking of purchasing a DELL Powervault LT2000 device which consists of 1 or 2 LTO6 tape drives with 24 slots giving 60TB of data space for retention

I've read a lot on the subject and many people seem to do dumps on a remote HD, etc, but to get to 60TB of disk space would cost a lot and would be less reliable then a tape library in my opinion.

We need something automated and reliable. Hopefully, with a nice gui to restore individual files etc...

We already have backup exec 2014 for our windows servers, but they don't make an agent for freebsd.
Symantec has netbackup which supports FreeBSD, but it seems really expensive (A rep will call me, tells all about the price lol)

I've read on Bacula and Amanda, and it really doesn't feel like a product mature enough (outdated documentation, no clear indication the tape library would work, etc). Their commercial counterparts are really expensives... I'm afraid to purchase hardware, new server, etc and end up with nothing working.

In the past, we used backup exec to backup freebsd using their legacy backup agents in linux compat mode and it was working really well. We tried (without extensive effort) to make work their linux agent on freebsd without success.

So my questions are:

1-      Does anyone have a tape library working with bacula or Amanda ? Does it work well ? (meaning stable, reliable and good performance)

2-      Would anyone be willing to try to make backup exec work on freebsd using linux compat mode ? I would be willing to finance the project up to 500$ perhaps other people reading this could also contribute to have more man hours on this task.

I love so much FreeBSD Over Linux, but it's always hard to get support from vendors... We are even evaluating to switch our fileservers to Centos (where we also dump sql databases and could replicate important data from freeBSD) to be able to easily back them up using Backup Exec's agent. But this would be my last resort as I don't want to support linux box where everything else in in FreeBSD.

Any help/comment would be appreciated.

Thanks

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ian Lord
MSD Informatique
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