Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: A must for everyone dealing with Unix backup and recovery, HA stuff.Many thanks to the author.
Rating:
Summary: Indespensible for sysadmins!
Review: Backing up networks and filesystems is an integral part of System Administration, but few realize how essential and complicated backup and recoveries can be, especially for very large databases and filesystems. This book should be the first book you read on this subject. The book does not try to cover one method, or product, or utility in depth, but rather, it gives you everything you should know about backup and recoveries. It covers cost issues, hardware issues, networking strategies, commercial and non-commercial utilities, and all of their pros and cons. What really sets this book apart from other such books is the focus on how to plan backup strategies well. The author clearly intends readers to do more than just know how to do backups, but how to design a system that will be reliable, professional, and optomized for quick and successful restores. If you are serious about protecting Unix systems from potential disaster (especially if you do this for a living), then purchase this book! Thanks O'Reilly!
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Summary: This is "The" Bible of Backup and Recovery
Review: Backup and recovery are the quintessential thankless jobs. If you complete them successfully, no one notices. However, any mistakes (whether the fault is yours, a mechanical failure, or some other disaster) will create more attention than a "Wanted" poster on the Internet. It's a well-known fact that every computer system should be backed up regularly. However, the guidelines are a little vague. No one tells you how to backup, what to backup or when to backup. It's your responsibility as administrator. You are the one who somehow has to form a policy, make sure that it works, and be able to recover the computer data and setup in case of a catastrophe. Finally, someone has put the procedures in a readable, practical guide. W. Curtis Preston's UNIX Backup and Recovery shows you how to determine backup plans and procedures. He even describes the common (and the not-so-common) problems with recovery. He discusses the elements of backup policies and describes commercial products that your company may prefer. Preston illustrates how to backup your company's data, its databases, and more importantly, demonstrates how to recover that data from its backup media. Every system administrator needs this book. It's not a luxury; it's a necessity. Preston has written a guidebook for the dreaded tasks of backup and recovery, which shows administrators how to define the policies and implement the procedures. UNIX Backup & Recovery is a superb and essential book that will be used often.
Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Backup Reference
Review: Backup and recovery are the quintessential thankless jobs. If you complete them successfully, no one notices. However, any mistakes (whether the fault is yours, a mechanical failure, or some other disaster) will create more attention than a "Wanted" poster on the Internet. It's a well-known fact that every computer system should be backed up regularly. However, the guidelines are a little vague. No one tells you how to backup, what to backup or when to backup. It's your responsibility as administrator. You are the one who somehow has to form a policy, make sure that it works, and be able to recover the computer data and setup in case of a catastrophe. Finally, someone has put the procedures in a readable, practical guide. W. Curtis Preston's UNIX Backup and Recovery shows you how to determine backup plans and procedures. He even describes the common (and the not-so-common) problems with recovery. He discusses the elements of backup policies and describes commercial products that your company may prefer. Preston illustrates how to backup your company's data, its databases, and more importantly, demonstrates how to recover that data from its backup media. Every system administrator needs this book. It's not a luxury; it's a necessity. Preston has written a guidebook for the dreaded tasks of backup and recovery, which shows administrators how to define the policies and implement the procedures. UNIX Backup & Recovery is a superb and essential book that will be used often.
Rating:
Summary: The only book of its kind.
Review: Backup and recovery can be -- let's face it, IS -- a miserable responsibility, and there's never been a way to learn how it's done in the real world, let alone multi-terabyte enterprise environments. This book provides several critical features for anyone whose responsibilities include data storage management: 1. It's huge. A vast range of backup and recovery topics are covered. 2. It covers the theory and practice of network-based backup in large environments, whereas most technical guides assume you're dumping a few gigs to an 8mm. Even if that's the case, this book will help you do it right and show you how to plan for the future. 3. It's full of anecdotes and personal experiences, and it's written in a friendly style. Backup and recovery is not exactly the most engaging topic, but the conversational tone and the real-life horror stories in sidebars make it far easier to absorb than your average vendor manual. 4. It covers hot database backups without assuming you're a DBA. 5. It's an O'Reilly. If you're a sysadmin, buy it. It'll serve you well for the rest of your career.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: Curtis Preston has put years of experience and a great deal of heart into UB&C. It's an O'Reilly, so it's got breadth and depth. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on backing up networks with the free tool, AMANDA, and on bare-metal recovery techniques for Linux. There's also a chapter on high availability system/network architecture, which I didn't anticipate from the book's title. This is a fun book which I effortlessly read from cover to cover, because the author has presented backup and recovery as both a metaphor for life and as life itself. Curtis explains how to prepare for the day your wife is having a baby at the hospital across the street from the office where your 24/7 Unix network has crashed and come back up in need of data recovery! I like having a guy like that on my bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: This author can feel your pain!
Review: Curtis Preston has put years of experience and a great deal of heart into UB&C. It's an O'Reilly, so it's got breadth and depth. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on backing up networks with the free tool, AMANDA, and on bare-metal recovery techniques for Linux. There's also a chapter on high availability system/network architecture, which I didn't anticipate from the book's title. This is a fun book which I effortlessly read from cover to cover, because the author has presented backup and recovery as both a metaphor for life and as life itself. Curtis explains how to prepare for the day your wife is having a baby at the hospital across the street from the office where your 24/7 Unix network has crashed and come back up in need of data recovery! I like having a guy like that on my bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: This author can feel your pain!
Review: Curtis Preston has put years of experience and a great deal of heart into UB&C. It's an O'Reilly, so it's got breadth and depth. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on backing up networks with the free tool, AMANDA, and on bare-metal recovery techniques for Linux. There's also a chapter on high availability system/network architecture, which I didn't anticipate from the book's title. This is a fun book which I effortlessly read from cover to cover, because the author has presented backup and recovery as both a metaphor for life and as life itself. Curtis explains how to prepare for the day your wife is having a baby at the hospital across the street from the office where your 24/7 Unix network has crashed and come back up in need of data recovery! I like having a guy like that on my bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: I had almost no experience with *nix
Review: Even though I was still very new to Linux/UNIX, this book was able to help me create a fully automated backup routine as well as how to restore from those backups. I found the book very easy to read and not at all dry.
Rating:
Summary: I had almost no experience with *nix
Review: Even though I was still very new to Linux/UNIX, this book was able to help me create a fully automated backup routine as well as how to restore from those backups. I found the book very easy to read and not at all dry.
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