Unix Backup and Recovery

Why Should You Read This Book?

If you’ve been doing system administration for some time, you may be asking yourself this question. There are many answers. Perhaps self-preservation is your primary motivator. You’d like to make sure you don’t lose your job the next time that a disk drive goes south. Perhaps you’ve already got a decent backup system, but you’d just like to make it better. Maybe you are looking for some new ideas on how to deal with upcoming backup and recovery needs. What follows are some of the reasons I think you should read it.

You Never Want to Say These Words

“We lost only a few days’ worth of data.” I swore the day I said that that I would never say those words again. From that day forward, I was convinced of the importance of backups. I never again assumed anything, and I began to study everything I could about backup technology. This book represents my attempt to compile what I have learned into a single volume, and it is written so that no one who reads it should ever need to utter the preceding statement. In my opinion, no amount of data loss is acceptable . I would also wager that you would be hard-pressed to find an end user who would feel much different. Whether it’s a spreadsheet that one person created, or a customer database representing hours, or days of sales invoices and the efforts of hundreds of people—ask the person who needs the data how much data loss they think is acceptable. Every statement, every opinion, every story, and every chapter in ...