Customer Reviews

Unix Backup and Recovery

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

I worked with Curtis at a previous employer of mine. You don't begin to truly understand the complete scope of backups and all the issues involved unless you're a certified genius (which he is), and you live, eat, breathe, and drink backups day-in and day-out (which he does).

Most admins hate to even think about backups (it's the most menial and unpleasant of all admin tasks), but we also recognize that they're necessary. Finally we have a book from a true expert that can help us minimize the effluent that we have to deal with, and spend more of our time doing the things we really like.

I believe that the most important advantage of this book is that it addresses strategic issues first and thus will remain valuable for many years to come.

Secondly, it focuses on the basics: - talks about choices and questions one should think about before implementing anything. - explains how to 'sell' backup (actually restore) to management - reminds us that restoration is THE most important objective

Finally, it was fun reading and is full of experience and cases.

All in all, this is one book I would not like my competitors to have.

I wish I had this book available many years ago. I read the chapters almost everyday since I baught it (this one is one of the best books i baught). If you are dealing with Backup and recovery on Unix, High availability etc. This is the book you want. The book has lots of humourus stories about his encounters with backup and restore senarios. I liked the Preface page. The book is all filled with the "right" information you need.

Great book ! Great value for money !

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!

This is *THE* Computer System backup book. It contains all the basics of why you want to backup computer systems, plus many of the real world experience details. It is written from a Unix perspective, but is still applicable to Windows and other non-Unix environments.

I've been using this book as a general guide for several years now. It was a book I watched work it's way through the O'Reilly system from first announcement to general release. I bought it when it first came out. I have not been disappointed in it.

Many people think of computer system backups as a dry old musty topic of interest to nobody in particular. But 9/11 showed how important good disaster recovery planning and procedures could be to a business.

Some of the specifics are now a little out of date, but not by leaps and bounds. It is still very good for its core reason for being - Backups. It is very much less out of date than other computer books on the market today.

I have been dealing with large-scale computer system backups and disaster recovery for large employers for years... and I still consult this book regularly to make sure have not missed anything important. It covers all the topics you need.

If you're a sysadmin or DBA you must read it ! OK, you think you know enough about backups. WRONG ! Read it and you will change your mind. Gives you a real world picture of backups, when, why and how to the it correctly. Covers several Unix flavors and also the most used Databases. The scripts are very good and very usefull. A "must have" book !

I had just bought this book and had thumbed through the chapters a little and read about the first two chapters. One of my systems experienced a hard crash one night and I could not get the Oracle database to come back up. Knowing basically nothing about Oracle and unable to contact the DBA or the Support people, I remembered this book had a chapter on Oracle recovery. Needless to say, it worked. If someone like myself who had never worked with Oracle before was able to use this book to easily recover a database, anyone can. The author explains about native backup utilities, databases, structures, etc on an easily understandable level. He constantly adds notes from his experiences that add enormous value to the test. Buy this Book!

I wish I had had this book available when I began learning UNIX system administration. The book is full of useful examples and really good advice. His coverage of native UNIX backup tools is extremely good. The discussions of bare metal recovery are by themselves worth the cost of the book.

It's not a perfect book, however. I found the book to be too chatty, with too many personal anecdotes that just distract from the message. More importantly, the author fails to go into any depth comparing the commercial backup packages that are available for UNIX systems and relational databases. He explains ways to evaluate the various packages, which is valuable, but some actual commentary and opinion would have been most welcome.