[ILUG] backing up a windows nas with linux

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi all,

we have a NAS server here which we need to redesign the backup system for.
We're looking at a disk2disk2tape setup and were wondering if we could use
Linux as the intermediary backup machine.

The NAS server itself is a sealed DELL box which runs Win2K SP4.

I intend doing some preliminary testing and benchmarking to see whether
linux or windows would be a better platform for the backup server but I
would first like to know what people's experiences on linux are.  In
particular, what transport methods are commonly used (rsync, samba, ssh,
...?) in this situation.

One requirement which seems problematic is being able to restore Windows
ACLs.  It seems that samba does its best to map Windows ACLs onto UNIX file
permissions or POSIX ACLs but this not an exact mapping as the OS simply
doesn't support the same set of permissions.  So there would clearly be
some loss of ACLs if one restored from linux.  Is there any linux way to
back up a share like this which can completely (re)store Windows ACLs?

I note samba's net command (sp. net rpc share migrate) "can be used to copy
files and directories with full preservation of ACLs as well as DOS file
attributes.  However, the preservation of ACLs can only be as good as the
OS on which you store them so samba can migrate windows-to-windows
perfectly but windows-to-linux will be ACL-lossy.  Besides, I wonder if the
net command would really be practical for something like a nightly backup.

So, I guess my questions are:

1. Does anyone do d2d2t via linux?  If so, what means do you use to
   transport/store the data?
2. Do you have a way to preserve ACLs or am I asking for too much?
3. Does anyone have any suggestions for ways to do this with Linux?

Gavin