[Dovecot] backup strategy

[Rick Romero]

On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 13:23 +0000, Hugo Monteiro wrote:
> Jochen Kaechelin wrote:
> > what's the prefered way to backup users mail?
> > i use doevcot shipping with debian/etch an maildir.
> >
> > thanx
> >
> 
> Have you considered Amanda or Bacula?
> 
> www.amanda.org
> www.bacula.org

IMHO, if you're going to use tapes, just buy ArcServe.   I've used it
for years on Netware, and was unable to get it to work with Debian (so
I'd suggest rsync/mysqldump to a supported box).  Now I've been using
bacula, and it's just not a polished solution.  I'm no *nix newbie, but
just setting up a rotation was a headache, and the expiration doesn't
seem to work right.  Missing a job means you have to go back and start
pruning - and I still don't have a proper "last day of week is weekly,
unless it's the last day of month" rotation - and that's with one tape,
daily, FULL, backups.  

I have been able to restore from it, though due to setup issues, I've
again had to do more work than necessary.  It seems the backup database
gets HUGE (possibly due to lack of incrementals), even though it's SQL,
and that slows things down too.  Like NTFS, it leaves me wishing I had
Novell's Salvage so I could just pull the file back and be done with it.

Backup just isn't something I feel I should ever have to really think
about.

ArcServe and Netware are probably the only two pieces of software I can
easily justify purchasing.

Rick