The aspect of backup saving (and storage) is, certainly, one of the most important in the world of information: why would anyone want to lose his/her data as a result of the error (whether software or hardware error)? Since, there is a wide array of backup tools. I list the most necessary requirements, in my view, to these tools:
- Ease of automation and the very existence of such. However, this requirement is almost completely balanced by the presence of Cron in all the general purpose *nix distributives. Still, backing up is just the very case when you should not put all your eggs in one basket.
- Supported media and network backups. A backup tool can be arbitrarily remarkable, but if it supports only a limited set of media available for storing backups, then it is not worth a button. Creation of backups via network (including cloud) storages stands alone. Here appears the aspect of encryption and transmission of data and of backups themselves.
- Ease of recovery. I suppose, comments are needless here, because if the loss of data has occurred, its recovery should be as quick and painless as possible.
- Ease of initial configuration. This requirement is, of course, debatable since backup creation is configured only once. However, people often make a choice in favor of far less functional tools only because of their simplicity.
I did not make it a point to describe in details this or that tool — it is possible to write a separate book or at least an article almost about each of them. Here is just a brief overview of them.
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