“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…”