Network backup with Burp, Obnam, and Backshift

Backup Battle

Article from ADMIN 10/2012

By Thomas Drilling

The well-known free backup solutions Bacula and Amanda now have some competition. Burp, Obnam, and Backshift are three promising newcomers that impress with interesting features.

When Graham Keeling became annoyed with the complexity of network backup software program Bacula [1], he fired up his program editor. The result was the compact network backup solution Burp [2], which runs either in client or server mode, can be controlled completely with parameters, and is therefore also suitable for use in scripts.

Burp's server mode is only supported on Unix/Linux machines, whereas a client installer is also available for 32- and 64-bit Windows systems.

Among other things, Burp uses Librsync to create space-saving delta backups. The main difference between ordinary incremental backups and delta backups is revealed when you back up data that is subject to continuous change. Then, each incremental backup data set comprises the complete contents of the previously created incremental backup data set, as well as all the changes and newly added data since the last full backup. In contrast, delta backups only contain data changed or added since the last backup (full or incremental).

Burp Features

To back up Windows hosts, Burp uses the Windows Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS), thus guaranteeing non-disruptive and consistent backups of Windows computers. It also supports junctions [3], a type of symbolic link on NTFS filesystems.

On Unix systems, Burp can back up hardlinks, symlinks, fifos, and device nodes over the network, as well as files and directories. As of version 1.1.70 from last year, Burp also backs up Extended Attributes and Access Control Lists (ACLs) under FreeBSD.

Burp is free software and is available under the AGPLv3 on SourceForge [4]. The current stable version (1.3.0) dates back to January of this year, whereas the current

...

Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).