[Advice needed] Small Office Backup Solution

[J]

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 23:57, Florian Diesch <diesch at spamfence.net> wrote:
> Amichai Rotman <amichai at iglu.org.il> writes:
>
>> I have a few customers with very small offices (up to 10-15 users). They
>> have a mixed network (Windows XP Pro clients, Linux server).
>>
>> I a looking for a backup solution with the following requirements:
>>
>> * Linux based Server
>> * Simple to set up and deploy
>> * Cross Platform: A windows client (preferably  hidden service style)
>> * A way for the management to monitor the backups without accessing the
>> Linux Server directly.
>> * Incremental / Delta support.
>> * CLI interface for me to be able to manage remotely over ssh
>> * No Tape support needed - most of them use an external USB hard drive
>>
>> I'll appreciate any recommendations for suitable external hard drives (like
>> the WD Passport series?)
>
> Have a look at http://www.amanda.org/ and http://www.bacula.org/

FWIW, I never had any luck in getting bacula to actually work.  It
took me forever to even get it compiled on RHEL when I was evaluating
backup solutions.  I'd suggest Amanda over bacula any day of the week.

Amanda has been around for ever.  There is a LARGE user base and support base.
Amanda has commercial backing as an option for support.
Amanda was just, for me at least, simply easier to install, and
configure and get running, and it will write backups to anything
(CD-R, local hard disk, remote NAS, Tape drives or vaults, etc).

Cheers,
Jeff