Best tape backup software

[Julian Opificius]

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 23:06:28 -0700
bronto@csd-bes.net wrote:

> I'm trying out a tape backup solution for my server.  More of an experiment to
> see how I like it than a long term plan.  Even so...
> 
> I've done a search for good utilities and haven't come across anything that
> thrills me.  What I want is something that's easy to configure, hopefully with
> an interface of some sort, not just command line.  I want to do a daily
> rotation of tapes like I used to do in the old Jumbo 250 days - a full backup
> at the beginning of the month, and incrementals daily thereafter, rotating 2 or
> more tapes.  I want to get it fully scheduled so that I don't have to think
> about erasing tapes at the beginning of the month, and of course there should
> be some sort of notification if there are errors or when the tape is running
> out of space.  Locating the most recent version of a file on a tape or backup
> set should be easy and intuitive.
> 
> I am aware that many simply use tar, but for some reason feel more comfortable
> with something structured - mostly because I suspect restores will be easier if
> there's a program actually managing the backups.
> 
> FWIW, I've toyed the last month with taper, but the interface is buggy and it
> lowers my confidence, and I've also looked at cpio.  What else is there?  I
> much prefer nicely written GUIs.
> 

I notice this has so far gone unanswered, so ..

I have just started looking at Bacula (www.bacula.org) for a non profit
org I'm the IT wrangler for. It allegedly has good GUI interfaces
for various client side OSs. Looking at the download page I see a
package for OS-X, so it's fair to say it has been made to run on PPC.
I'll try to get time to give it a try this week (I'm trying to get full
time work right now, so I have to be careful about priorities). If you
do the same, so much the better, and we can share notes here.

Cheers,

-- 
julian.