Ten essential backup tools for Linux

A reliable backup tool is an essential — and finding one with the features you want need not cost a fortune, says Jack Wallen.

Whether you work in IT or you are a computer power user at home, you need a backup tool. It should allow you to make scheduled, one-time, local and remote backups, along with other tasks.

Plenty of proprietary solutions exist. Some are minimal and cost-effective, while others are feature-rich and expensive.

The open-source community also has plenty to offer in terms of backup software. Here are 10 excellent utilities for the Linux operating system — in fact, some of these are cross-platform and will back up Linux, Windows and Mac.

1. Fwbackups
Fwbackups is by far the easiest of all the Linux backup options to use. It is cross-platform, has a user-friendly interface and can do single or recurring scheduled backups.

The fwbackups tool allows you to do backups either locally or remotely in tar, tar.gz, tar.bZ, or rsync format. You can back up an entire computer or a single file.

Unlike many backup utilities, fwbackups is easy to install because it will probably be found in your distribution's repository. Both backing up and restoring are incredibly easy — as is scheduling a remote, recurring scheduled backup. You can also perform incremental or differential backups to speed up the process.

2. Bacula
Bacula is a powerful backup utility and one of the few Linux open-source backup tools to be truly enterprise-ready. But with that comes a level of complexity you might not find in other backup software. Unlike many other utilities, Bacula contains a number of components:

1. Director: The application that supervises all of Bacula
2. Console: This is how you communicate with the Bacula Director
3. File: This is the application that is installed on the machine to be backed up
4. Storage: This application performs the reading/writing to your storage space
5. Catalog: This application is responsible for the databases used
6. Monitorp: Allows the administrator to keep track of the status of the various Bacula tools

Bacula is not the easiest backup utility to configure and use, but it is one of the most powerful. So if you are looking for power and are not concerned about putting in the time to familiarise yourself with configuration, Bacula is the tool for you.

3. Rsync
Rsync is one of the most widely used Linux backup utilities. With rsync, you can do flexible incremental backups, either locally or remotely.

Rsync can update whole directory trees and file systems; preserve links, ownerships, permissions and privileges; use rsh, ssh or direct sockets for connection; and support anonymous connections.

Rsync is a command-line tool, although front-ends are available, such as Grsync. But the front-ends negate the flexibility of having a simple command-line backup tool.

One of the biggest pluses of using a command-line tool is that you can create simple scripts to use, in conjunction with cron, to create automated backups. For this, rsync is perfect.

4. Mondo Rescue
Mondo Rescue is one of those tools you around for disaster recovery, because one of its strengths is backing up an entire installation. Another strength of Mondo Rescue is that it can back up to nearly any medium, including CD, DVD, tape, NFS and hard disk.

Mondo Rescue also supports LVM 1/2, RAID, ext2, ext3, ext4, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS and VFAT. If your file system is not listed, there is a call on the Mondo website to email the developers for a file system request and they will make it work.

Mondo Rescue is used by large companies, such as Lockheed Martin, so you know it is reliable.

5. Simple Backup Solution
Simple Backup Solution is primarily targeted at desktop backup. It can back up files and directories, and allows regular expressions to be used for exclusion purposes.

Because Simple Backup Solution uses compressed archives, it is not the best option for backing up large...