PBA marketing stuff on Amahi.org is very misleading

[boomerang56]

Calling PBA an "appliance" is a bit of a stretch.

I mean it doesn't support any kind of automated backup. so it's useless in any deployment that invloves more than one or two machines. I mean - "boot to PXE"? To run a backup? I can see doing that for a bare metal restore, but come on.

The Amahi.org pages call it practically a replacement for True Image or Ghost.

It's nothing of the sort. True Image can image a mounted, logged-in filesystem. Automated and unattended. It can do differential and incremental backups, PBA can't.

PBA was one of the big reasons I installed Amahi to test it out and needless to say I'm disappointed in the much overhyped marketing. PBA code hasn't even been touched in years by the developer. He suggested I try Clonezilla, which also isn't anywhere close to what's needed at the desktop level - regular automated backups. A machine that has to be PXE booted or needs other manual intervention in order to be backed up is a machine that won't get backed up. It's just that simple.

So far Amahi looks like it will do a very good job at it's core functionality of being a good file-server.

But these apps they're choosing to advertise with it. Who even recommends this stuff? PBA is a joke compared to inexpensive off the shelf backup software.

I wish Amahi would refrain from offering *any* apps unless they were of very high quality. Some of the apps I think are very good. But PBA is pointless in my opinion - and badly marketed. I don't think anyone at Amahi has ever even used it. If they had I'd think the marketing copy would be a lot less breathless & over-hyped.

Also - a pet peeve of mine is documentation. For instance It's impossible for me to get any clients to PXE boot to the Amahi box. Is the PXE server running? I don't know - where is all the setup stuff documented?

When you guys choose apps to include part of the "high quality" criteria needs to be "well written end user documentation".

Amahi is great. But poorly thought out barely working applications with nonexistent documentation like PBA give it a big black eye in my opinion.

[bsk]

I wish Amahi would refrain from offering *any* apps unless they were of very high quality. Some of the apps I think are very good. But PBA is pointless in my opinion - and badly marketed. I don't think anyone at Amahi has ever even used it. If they had I'd think the marketing copy would be a lot less breathless & over-hyped.

I have, and it has saved me.

As to high quality, these apps are open source, we do not supply any paid apps other than RPM Fusion Paid Version. We like to give users an option to choose what apps they want to install, you do not have to install all of them. If you want to see an app packaged with Amahi, suggest it to us and we will see if its possible. You can become a contributor yourself as well. If we were to offer paid versions of apps, then Amahi would not be free.

[cpg]

Touché!

The original name of PBA was Personal Backup Appliance. It was packaged as a VMWare appliance, hence the name.

When we integrated it into Amahi, with the help of the original author, we renamed it to Personal Backup Application with permission, but we did not really change all over the place. The wiki was also written a long time ago (calling it marketing is a bit of a stretch, you'll give me that).

We should retire PBA, though it still has lots of active users, believe it or not.

Since then, we have been trying to phase it out in favor of Clonezilla, which is more actively maintained. Perhaps one day when Amahi becomes more accepted we will draw the interest of more mature applications. A full disk bare metal backup of a machine while it's running would be awesome, though I suspect hard to be open source (maybe not?), since it would require insider details or operating systems running.

However, that project is not moving forward too fast. Some users *do* have it running, under the new PXE boot manager called amahi-netboot.

Are you interested in helping out perhaps?

As for the quality, we have a long list of apps, and out testers team test them over long periods of time in beta before they go live. We have a peer review process to share and test apps. Until we become more mainstream with more developers and perhaps more donations and resources, we are seriously shorthanded. Our tester team really takes a lot of heat (especially from me, as core developer), to make sure the apps work well. As for the relative quality of the apps, we can't control that, it's open source and things evolve with time for the better.

Thanks for taking the time to give the feedback, though. It's a good reminder that Amahi has some way to go. We'll get there. Maybe with your help?

[cpg]

BTW, there are incremental backup solutions to do net backups into an Amahi server, from Time Machine, to the clients in XP (plus free ones), and the Vista integrated (which is completely automated after setup and not bad at all last time I tried it).

[boomerang56]

Sorry if that was harsh. Yeah, of course I'm willing to help out. It will have to be in the role of tester and user though, not developer.

To be fair, I think Amahi is awesome.

Where I have the most issues is with documentation.

I'm not a newbie to Linux. I've worked with Monta Vista daily in the past on an embedded device. I'm new to Fedora, my distro of choice is SuSE - their management tools are better than those of Windows in my opinion. I never liked the way RedHat did stuff but that's neither here nor there since there's ample books and web based how-tos for RedHat and Fedora so that's not a problem. I've compiled & configured new kernels plenty of times. At work. It's not something I want to mess with at home.

And that's the thing. If I intended this to be a small business server, that'd be one thing (but then if that was the case, I'd probably be looking at ClarkConnect/ClearOS which has decent documentation).

I see Amahi as a competitor to Windows Home Server, which is really the level of functionality I'm looking for (except without their "drive extender" software fake raid).

So here's my usage case. I'm evaluating this from the point of view of a typical "advanced but not propeller-hat-wearing" home user. I'm used to automated backups running while the OS runs. I think it must not be all that bad, there are loads of shareware programs that support VSS (shadow copy).

Bacula for example supports VSS. It's FOSS too. I've seen screenshots of a very nice and capable web management tool for it.

I wish Amahi had Bacula as a one click install - sign me up as a beta tester if you ever think about packaging Bacula.

To be fair to Clonezilla from what I've read, it's an awesome tool for deploying large amounts of bare metal images at the same time. An admin's dream especially in an educational environment.

Average home users though like myself want automated unattended backups. I want to be able to bring home a new laptop, run a client program once and forget about it.

As to high quality vs open source that's an argument that should never happen.

There's plenty of very high quality free open source out there. Plenty that is very well documented.

For example FreeNAS. Download one PDF file (70+ pages) and most of what you need is right there.

Sorry but the wiki thing on the Amahi site just doesn't cut it. There needs to be regular documentation in my opinion. PDF files, OpenOffice documents, whatever.

But all that aside the reason I posted the first message was that what's said about PBA simply isn't true. It's nowhere near a competitor for TrueImage or Ghost. It's a crude hobbyist's kludge that has virtually no documentation. I don't care if it's retired or not I just think the description should be rewritten at

http://www.amahi.org/apps/personal-backup-appliance

Back to documentation, it's very very hard to find out basic things. "What is the point of <nickname>.yourhda.org"? "How do I access it"? "How can I stream media outside my home using any of the apps included as one-click installs?"

I wish you well. But you need to screen out the inferior stuff with poorly thought out usage models and poor documentation. What's the point of a one click install of Jinzora for example if it can't find any of my media, throws error messages on simple things like file browsing? Quality, not quantity. I'd rather have 5 bulletproof apps that are well documented and easy enough for the average tech to grok at the first pass through the documentation than a ton of stuff that takes a pointy-headed geek with a propeller cap and plenty of time to figure out.

Joomla for instance. 5 stars. Proof that open source can be high quality (and well documented).

I hope Amahi takes off. I think it's great. I'm not suggesting anything be dumbed down. I'll keep using TrueImage for backups and have it back up to my HDA.

[dvdesign]

I see Amahi as a competitor to Windows Home Server, which is really the level of functionality I'm looking for

I have to agree with boomerang56 on this point, i personally am here looking for a free/opensource alternative to WHS. I think there are 3 major functions everyone wants from a home server; Centralized storage/file share, Centralized/automated backups, and media streaming.

One of the things that stood out to me on the home page was "Network backups Backup all your networked machines simply and easily". However after looking through some of the wiki, i find out that this isnt really true. There is no real centralized, automated backup solution ('all' and 'simply and easily' implies this to me). For all appearances it looks like my best bet will be to have Windows auto backup to a network share, and while that works fine when you have 1-2 computers...its a bit much to have to configure a bunch of separate machines to backup...as opposed to setting it all up in one place (the server).

Im hopeing for the best, i think that Amahi has alot of potential, and i understand that its not a money machine like WHS...but itd be nice to see some of the basics covered. The foundation of what a home server implies should be covered well, so that the average user can set it up easily, and have it preform the basic functions of a home server.

Like boomerang, dont get me wrong, i think Amahi is the BEST free/open source option for a home server that i have come across...and if i didnt care i wouldnt have bothered adding my opinion. I think its time that linux systems shine in the mainstream. Id love for a free solution like Amahi to really dig into Microsoft's market share.

[relrobber]

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't want an "automated" backup app running by itself on my system. That's compute cycles I could be using to blast baddies or edit videos. I prefer a machine running from a ramdisk to do a full hdd backup, and to schedule incrementals manually.

[ajaxmike]

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't want an "automated" backup app running by itself....

I think you are in the minority

[moredruid]

/joins minority

I at least want the option to choose. Amahi should not think _for_ me, I'm capable of that myself thank you very much. I don't want it to force "convenient choices" on to me.

What I want is a nice graphical installer (can be browser based of course) that asks me, the user, what I want and nothing more. Am I a power user? I'll handle most things myself (storage, auto backups, some specific apps). Am I someone who want a drop in replacement for WHS? Make sure to tick all the check boxes (maybe even make the default checked!) and off you go. Create a nice page on how to add/remove the functionality or create it as an app in case the user did not read the options during install or needs them later (or doesn't need them anymore).

just my $ 0.02

[ajaxmike]

/joins minority

I at least want the option to choose.

Well of course. I want to be able to set it up for automated/scheduled backup with the settings I choose. I should also be able to run it manually if I choose. Remember, computers were invented for automation.