It occurred to us that we only had one DVD Writer in the business, and that was on a development server, so we needed to get some new hardware.
USB DVD Writer
As seasoned Linux users will be aware, although many peripheral devices are not advertised as being Linux compatible, many do work without issue. However, it usually pays to do a bit of research before parting with hard-earned cash.Our choice of USB DVD writer was the LiteOn EUAU108-11 and although it's not the cheapest USB DVD writer on the market, at £25 delivered it's still at a non bank-breaking price point. Our purchasing decision was influenced by LiteOn's claim of Liunx compatibility as well as the sleek appearance of the unit. I mean, who doesn't like a bit of sleek?
Ok, I'll cut to the chase. Does it cut the mustard? And is it really Linux compatible? In our experience, yes and yes. We've been using it for four months with a standard Ubuntu 13.10 installation, and so far it's not missed a beat, not even the slightest niggle. It's true that the USB connection is ridiculously short, but we had a small extension knocking around the office, so no problems there.
Hands Off
It's important to consider the security of all business data. We use encrypted drive partitions to protect our day to day working data, but once data is burned onto DVD media this clearly doesn't help. Although the discs won't be left lying around on desks we did decide to do a simple encryption of the backup data before burning.
As is often the case in the Linux world, it seemed that the easiest and most effective option was to open up the command prompt.
Encrypting
$ openssl aes-256-cbc -salt -in backup-2014-05-13.tar.gz -out backup-2014-05-13.tar.gz.encrypted enter aes-256-cbc encryption password: Verifying - enter aes-256-cbc encryption password:
Decrypting
$ openssl aes-256-cbc -d -salt -in backup-2014-05-13.tar.gz.encrypted -out backup-2014-05-13.tar.gz.unencrypted
Automation
Although we find burning backup DVDs to be quite a simple process, it is definately a manual process. I can see that there may be some desire to automate it in the future. As far as we can see, there's no networked DVD writers available, but maybe we can cobble one together? How hard could that possibly be? Ahem.
