mini-review: Backup & Recovery

[David Cantrell]

I won't be putting this on the web site, cos it's too short and can
hardly be said to be unbiased, but ...

Title:     Backup & Recovery
ISBN:      0-596-10246-1
Author:    Curtis Preston
Publisher: O'Reilly

I contributed part of a chapter to this book, and so I got a free copy.
I was expecting to take it home, put it on the shelf, and never use it.
Today, less than 48 hours after getting the book in the post, I had to
use it.  The thoughtful comments and excellent description of how dump/
restore work prevented me from looking like a complete tit on a public
mailing list.  I therefore recommend this book.

More seriously, it does look jolly good, covering just about all the
backupish stuff that I've heard of and lots that I haven't.  But more
importantly, it devotes lots of space to *restoring* your backups -
complete with step-by-step instructions for "bare metal" recovery - and
talks about things to do when your backups are broken.

And it covers things that lots of admins don't like to think about, like
Exchange and MySQL (and other databases; judging from a quick skim of the
Oracle section I expect the coverage to be good).

Buy a copy of this book for your friendly local sysadmin.  He will love
you for ever.

-- 
David Cantrell | A machine for turning tea into grumpiness

One person can change the world, but most of the time they shouldn't
    -- Marge Simpson