W. Curtis Preston has specialized in designing data protection systems since 1993, and has designed such systems for many environments, both large and small. His lively prose and wry, real-world approach has made him a popular author and speaker.

Preface;
I Wish I'd Had This Book;
How This Book Is Organized;
What's New in This Book;
What's Missing?;
Speaking of [...];
Conventions Used in This Book;
How to Contact Us;
Safari® Enabled;
This Book Was a Team Effort;
Part 1: Introduction;
Chapter 1: The Philosophy of Backup;
Champagne Backup on a Beer Budget;
Why Should I Read This Book?;
Why Back Up?;
Wax On, Wax Off: Finding a Balance;
Chapter 2: Backing It All Up;
Don't Skip This Chapter!;
Deciding Why You Are Backing Up;
Deciding What to Back Up;
Deciding When to Back Up;
Deciding How to Back Up;
Storing Your Backups;
Testing Your Backups;
Monitoring Your Backups;
Following Proper Development Procedures;
Unrelated Miscellanea;
Good Luck;
Part 2: Open-Source Backup Utilities;
Chapter 3: Basic Backup and Recovery Utilities;
An Overview;
Backing Up and Restoring with ntbackup;
Using System Restore in Windows;
Backing Up with the dump Utility;
Restoring with the restore Utility;
Limitations of dump and restore;
Features to Check For;
Backing Up and Restoring with the cpio Utility;
Backing Up and Restoring with the tar Utility;
Backing Up and Restoring with the dd Utility;
Using rsync;
Backing Up and Restoring with the ditto Utility;
Comparing tar, cpio, and dump;
Using ssh or rsh as a Conduit Between Systems;
Chapter 4: Amanda;
Summary of Important Features;
Configuring Amanda;
Backing Up Clients via NFS or Samba;
Amanda Recovery;
Community and Support Options;
Future Plans;
Chapter 5: BackupPC;
BackupPC Features;
How BackupPC Works;
Installation How-To;
Starting BackupPC;
Per-Client Configuration;
The BackupPC Community;
The Future of BackupPC;
Chapter 6: Bacula;
Bacula Architecture;
Bacula Features;
An Example Configuration;
Advanced Features;
Future Directions;
Chapter 7: Open-Source Near-CDP;
rsync with Snapshots;
rsnapshot;
rdiff-backup;
Part 3: Commercial Backup;
Chapter 8: Commercial Backup Utilities;
What to Look For;
Full Support of Your Platforms;
Backup of Raw Partitions;
Backup of Very Large Filesystems and Files;
Aggressive Requirements;
Simultaneous Backup of Many Clients to One Drive;
Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape Backup;
Simultaneous Backup of One Client to Many Drives;
Data Requiring Special Treatment;
Storage Management Features;
Reduction in Network Traffic;
Support of a Standard or Custom Backup Format;
Ease of Administration;
Security;
Ease of Recovery;
Protection of the Backup Index;
Robustness;
Automation;
Volume Verification;
Cost;
Vendor;
Final Thoughts;
Chapter 9: Backup Hardware;
Decision Factors;
Using Backup Hardware;
Tape Drives;
Optical Drives;
Automated Backup Hardware;
Disk Targets;
Part 4: Bare-Metal Recovery;
Chapter 10: Solaris Bare-Metal Recovery;
Using Flash Archive;
Preparing for an Interactive Restore;
Setup of a Noninteractive Restore;
Final Thoughts;
Chapter 11: Linux and Windows;
How It Works;
The Steps in Theory;
Assumptions;
Alt-Boot Full Image Method;
Alt-Boot Partition Image Method;
Live Method;
Alt-Boot Filesystem Method;
Automate Bare-Metal Recovery with G4L;
Commercial Solutions;
Chapter 12: HP-UX Bare-Metal Recovery;
System Recovery with Ignite-UX;
Planning for Ignite-UX Archive Storage and Recovery;
Implementation Example;
System Cloning;
Security;
System Recovery and Disk Mirroring;
Chapter 13: AIX Bare-Metal Recovery;
IBM's mksysb and savevg Utilities;
Backing Up with mksysb;
Setting Up NIM;
savevg Operations;
Verifying a mksysb or savevg Backup;
Restoring an AIX System with mksysb;
System Cloning;
Chapter 14: Mac OS X Bare-Metal Recovery;
How It Works;
A Sample Bare-Metal Recovery;
Part 5: Database Backup;
Chapter 15: Backing Up Databases;
Can It Be Done?;
Confusion: The Mysteries of Database Architecture;
The Muck Stops Here: Databases in Plain English;
What's the Big Deal?;
Database Structure;
An Overview of a Page Change;
ACID Compliance;
What Can Happen to an RDBMS?;
Backing Up an RDBMS;
Restoring an RDBMS;
Documentation and Testing;
Unique Database Requirements;
Chapter 16: Oracle Backup and Recovery;
Two Backup Methods;
Oracle Architecture;
Physical Backups Without rman;
Physical Backups with rman;
Flashback;
Managing the Archived Redo Logs;
Recovering Oracle;
Logical Backups;
A Broken Record;
Chapter 17: Sybase Backup and Recovery;
Sybase Architecture;
The Power User's View;
The DBA's View;
Protecting Your Database;
Backup Automation Through Scripting;
Physical Backups with a Storage Manager;
Recovering Your Database;
Common Sybase Procedures;
Sybase Recovery Procedure;
Chapter 18: IBM DB2 Backup and Recovery;
DB2 Architecture;
The backup, restore, rollforward, and recover Commands;
Recovering Your Database;
Chapter 19: SQL Server;
Overview of SQL Server;
The Power User's View;
The DBA's View;
Backups;
Logical (Table-Level) Backups;
Restore and Recovery;
Chapter 20: Exchange;
Exchange Architecture;
Storage Groups;
Backup;
Using ntbackup to Back Up;
Restore;
Exchange Restore;
Chapter 21: PostgreSQL;
PostgreSQL Architecture;
Backup and Recovery;
Point-in-Time Recovery;
Chapter 22: MySQL;
MySQL Architecture;
MySQL Backup and Recovery Methodologies;
Part 6: Potpourri;
Chapter 23: VMware and Miscellanea;
Backing Up VMware Servers;
Volatile Filesystems;
Demystifying dump;
How Do I Read This Volume?;
Gigabit Ethernet;
Disk Recovery Companies;
Yesterday;
Trust Me About the Backups;
Chapter 24: It's All About Data Protection;
Business Reasons for Data Protection;
Technical Reasons for Data Protection;
Backup and Archive;
What Needs to Be Backed Up?;
What Needs to Be Archived?;
Examples of Backup and Archive;
Can Open-Source Backup Do the Job?;
Disaster Recovery;
Everything Starts with the Business;
Storage Security;
Conclusion;
Colophon;