I wish to setup an automated backup system for three Windows XP machines in the same building to a Linux server out on the WAN. I visit each machine every few months and make a disk image for a bare metal recovery. I need a way to automatically backup user documents (including Outlook's mailbox file). This is for a small daycare/preschool and therefore needs to be a low budget project.
There will be no qualified sysadmin on site daily to deal with problems. The backup needs to run without user intervention and without fail.
The file recovery needs to either be accomplished remotely (i.e., they call me; I push the recovered file back to their system), or simple enough for a non-techie to operate.
As I see it the candidate systems are Amanda, Bacula and BackupPC. Reading the docs I see that BackupPC is probably out of the running because it does not do Volume Snapshot Services (VSS). What is your practical experience with these systems? Is there some other system that I should be considering?