W. Curtis Preston - Backup & Recovery: Inexpensive Backup Solutions for Open Systems

I hope you learn half as much reading this book as I did writing it. This was quite an interesting project, where we took the original book and expanded its scope so much that we had to change its title. I wrote Unix Backup and Recovery seven years ago, and a lot has changed since thenboth in the industry and in my life. The biggest change in the industry has been the proliferation of Windows, Mac OS, Exchange, and SQL Server in the data center. (I never saw the Apple Xserve coming.)

The biggest change for me has been having my eyes opened to backup and recovery applications beyond those considered traditional. Its true that I spend most of my professional life consulting with large companies that spend enough on backup software and hardware to fund a small army. I enjoy doing that. Its very rewarding to show a company how to save millions of dollars a year and make their backups and restores faster and more reliable in the process. (By the way, if you need help with your backup system, drop an email to thats what I do for a living.)

I also spend a good deal of the time traveling the world speaking to users about how to do this themselves. And when I do, I always get questions like these:

I got a quote for backup software from XYX, and they want $XXXX for backup software! Where am I supposed to get that kind of money!?

I couldnt afford backup software from XYZ, so we bought ABC instead, and it stinks. Can you recommend something better?

None of the commercial utilities can back up my MySQL or PostgreSQL database. How do I do that?

How do I do bare-metal recovery on ABC operating system?

Arent there open-source utilities that do this kind of thing?

So while Im actually preparing to write my next book on how to select, install, and manage commercial backup software systems, I felt that this book needed to come first. This book is aimed at the people who feel that the commercial software products arent meeting all their needs.

Perhaps youre a small shop that cant spend $10,000 just to get decent backup software. Perhaps youre already using a commercial backup software package, but you dont want to spend thousands of dollars on their agent to back up your DB2 databases, or you cant find anybody to back up your MySQL or PostgreSQL databases. This book is about giving you options free options.

Almost everything I talk about in this book is either included with your operating system or application, or is available as an open-source project. (The commercial products I do mention cost only $99.) You may be amazed at what you can do for free or almost free.