Re: File/Folder Encryption

Lucas Rockwell wrote:
> So, to make a very long story short, you can use UCBackup when you
> have FileVault enabled, but you have to do 3 things:
>
> 1) Request that the backup happen during the day
>
Firstly, thanks to Lucas for a great post! I'm going to start
increasing my exclude list to include (no pun intended) just about
everything on that list.

I just have one addendum: Know your network. There are a few places
both on and off campus where a daytime backup strategy is going to cause
some problems for users.

While we're getting rid of the old 10MB shared networks as fast as money
allows, there are still several around, and if you're on one, doing this
would be, IMHO, inadvisable. Essentially it can produce an
unintentional Denial Of Service by monopolizing bandwidth.

Also there are still several networks (almost all off campus) served by
T1 lines which would suffer even more when a significant load such as a
network backup is performed. This is why generally the strategy has
historically been to do it at night, when it can monopolize the network
without bugging anybody. Even on modern nets, it can induce slowness
which may be noticeable.

So If you backup during the day, I'd check if your local network is
100Mb (usually a good sign, 10Mb is a bad idea as it's likely shared
media and will bog down the entire subnet). And if off campus check
with your local building manager or IT support to find out if your
uplink to campus can handle it. If it's fiber(100Mb or Gigabit), you're
probably ok, if it's a T1(1.5Mb), not so much.

Another approach would be to email your group and let them know you're
backing up (manually as test) and see if anybody notices a slowdown.
Just be prepared to abort your backup when the howling begins. Also,
the initial backup is much larger than incremental backups that follow,
so if you're starting from scratch you may wish to let it backup
overnight initially and see if you can get away with the incremental
backups after that is complete.

</$0.02>

-Jay

-- 
Jay Bryon
Senior Network Engineer, U.C. Berkeley/IST/IS/NSO 
jay_at_berkeley.edu
2-5636
"Any idiot can be complex, it takes real genius to be simple"
-Al Einstein
[Unless stated explicitly otherwise, all opinions are my own (or Al's) and do not represent official policy of any part of IST, U.C. Berkeley or the U.C. Regents.]  
 
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