Those of us who have received the call can feel the tension and nervous tone in the caller's voice when he or she asks, “How good are the backups?” A failed disk, files deleted by mistake, a disgruntled coworker or, worse, a security breach all can be times when you need to depend on backups.

Data probably is the most important element in computing, but in too many cases I see data backups overlooked or approached in such a carefree manner that I shiver. To this end, this article discusses the University of Maryland's Amanda (advanced Maryland automatic disk archiver) backup software, a relatively easy-to-use disk archiver built upon native dump and/or GNU tar tools. I often feel Amanda does not get the respect it deserves in a Linux/UNIX cross-platform environment. I confidently can say, however, that Amanda is a reliable platform for many Linux and UNIX users who are comfortable with a command-line interface.

By Phil Moses at Linux Journal.

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