Recommended backup procedure and preserving my data...

[John Szakmeister]

I'm not looking for the "every branch taken is a backup" answer.  I
get that, but I'm more interested from a enterprise situation.  I have
data that I want to backup, and I want to make sure it's consistent.
For instance, how do I go about saving of the data (preferably,
incrementally) for 50 projects that might use a mix of separated
branches and shared repositories?  I should add another caveat: the
resultant data should be consistent, and I don't have to monkey around
with any of the internals of the backup.  Is my only choice to prevent
access to the shared repo and/or branch while backing up?  I'd like to
avoid that as we have folks working odd hours at times.

On a similar note: Subversion has the ability to dump a repository
into a well-known format, that can be used to upgrade your repository,
or downgrade it.  But I see it as something else: a format that I can
easily parse and use to migrate to a different tool.  So it's my data
liberator as well. :-)  I suppose fast-export and fast-import do the
same for me?

Sorry for all the questions, but I'd like to seriously consider
rolling out Bazaar in our infrastructure.  I can't really do it
though, unless I can take care of these issues as well.

Also, is there any alternative out there that gets us smart server
access, without setting up individual accounts on the system?  I
realize that I can proxy everyone through a single account, and use
something like bzr_access... I was just wondering if there are more
alternatives out there--other than a code hosting service, which we
can't use.

Thanks in advance!

-John