Unix Backup and Recovery
Unix Backup and Recovery by W. Curtis Preston
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Number of Pages:
- 736
- ISBN:
- 1565926420
- Product Group:
- book
- Publisher:
- O'Reilly Media
- Publication Date:
- Nov. 11, 1999
- BooksForGeeks.com ID:
- 1804
As the somewhat bitter joke has it, backups are too boring and expensive to bother about: only restores are important. In practice, backups are a business necessity like liability insurance. And, like insurance, it's important to get it right.
This is where Curtis Preston's UNIX Backup and Recovery dazzles. His enthusiasm for the subject shines from the pages. His primary concerns are heavy-duty business UNIX systems and the corporate databases they run, but he starts you off easy with the basics of tar, dump, cpio and other UNIX system utilities. You get discussions of disaster scenarios, planning, media types, native and commercial utilities and endless gotchas--those situations where life irritatingly fails to follow the theoretical models.
The strength of the book, though, is the sheer quantity of practical advice from someone who has clearly been there. This includes a supporting Web site with scripts, discussion, a mailing list and real life experiences. This experience extends to new breeds of file system, the relational databases that rely on them and strategies for securing them. The section describing the logical and physical structures of databases such as Informix and Oracle are worth the price of the book on their own. UNIX Backup and Recovery deserves to be a standard work for anyone whose job depends on data integrity. --Steve Patient
Reviews for Unix Backup and Recovery
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Educating
Rated out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2002
Unix backup and recovery is the kind of book that opens your eyes and shows you a new perspective on a topic that you thought you already had mastered.Initially I was expecting this to be a technical manual - but I actualy found it very entertaining with the horror stories of backups gone wrong and massive disk failures.
It is a very specialised book - so I would not realy recomend it for every Unix admin. However, if your role is mainly with backups then naturally you will benefit greatly from buying Unix backup & recovery.
As for the price - I have no complaints :o)
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An Excellent Textbook for the Professional
Rated out of 5 stars, January 12nd, 2002
Somewhat thicker than most of my other O'Reilly books this book contains much of value. I would strongly agree with the previous reviewer than the chapters covering Informix and Oracle Backup and Recovery are worth the cover price on their own. There is much else in the book that can be
of use to Unix Sysadmins and Oracle DBA's.
At the very least I know what my DBA's are talking about a lot more than I did before buying this book.
It is however purely a book for the Unix Professional and is of no value to anyone else. -
Definate must have for any Unix admin!
Rated out of 5 stars, October 12nd, 2000
Like most Unix admins I have a fair collection of O'Reilly books which are always of a very high standard but this book is by far the best yet.Starts with the basic principals and then shows how to translate them into policies and practises.
It's also been carefully written so that it doesn't focus too much on specific tools (other than the scripts supplied on the CDROM) so that it won't date as new tools come along.
In particular the database backup chapters are better than the vendors own manuals by a long way.
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If you want to know about UNIX backup/restore get that book
Rated out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2000
Very nice book. Easy to read and informative. I don't have any other books about UNIX backup/restore but this one seams complete and accurate. -
Beyond good, this book is almost 'godlike'.
Rated out of 5 stars, January 12th, 2000
This has to be one of the must have books for any UNIX administrator. The detail, information, and step-by-step guides are wonderful. The content is awe inspiring, covering a large number of solutions, but also a large number of commercial database products e.g. Oracle, Sybase and Informix. Again the detail within each of these three sections alone is worth the book price.Recommended to all levels of UNIX administrator from novice to expert, within simple to highly complex environments. It covers the lot!!