Agent,
Please tell me more about your remote workstation backup?
I use one of the many online backup services (the one I use is actually called First Backup) but most of them work the same. It basically runs a service on a workstation and after the initial backup (which can take 24hrs or more) runs something like rsync to patch the original backup. I do not recommend this as the only backup you do. This takes the place of taking a tape home every night to get a backup offsite. A full restore from a backup like this would take 24hrs or longer. In my situation there are stringent laws governing how my data is stored. This would mean that if I took a tape home I would have to be able to controll and log all physical access to that tape. My offsite backup it encrypted with blowfish so is considered secure. (This backup only includes a few very critical files in my case.)
DAR2 was the first good option that I found that could automatically push a backup to a workstation share. I set mine up with a daily job pushed to a share on my workstation. I set it to expire old backups every night. I then run an in house backup solution onto a server that is in a concrete room in the basement. This backup includes workstations and servers throughout the hospital. It also includes the DAR file created by DAR2 and the DB.zip. This backup runs as full every night (not incremented) I have a separate job for every day of week. (Mon, Tues, Wed, Thur) I then have a separate job for 5 weekends (Fri1, Fri2, Fri3, Fri4, Fri5). All of these jobs over write. With this setup I can restore back to any day in the last week and any weekend in the last month.
This is more then likely overkill for most.
I remember from another thread that you were trying to get backup to workstation share working on Linux. Did you ever get this sorted or did you finally give up?
DAR2 and Backup With DAR are very similar. Backup With DAR now has a few more options for backup schedules and the user panel is a bit easier to understand. Both are viable solutions in my mind. See the notes above about Backup with DAR as this needs further testing.
I find that most restores are the result of user error. I have only had a handful of harddrives go bad. I am usually restoring the file that somebody deleted in error last week. That is why I keep the multi-day and multi-weekend schedule. I really need to look into the new shadow copy work that is going on but so far have not had time.