[thaumaturgy]

a. My business has a partnership with a good data recovery outfit. We might be able to get you a good deal on a data recovery if you want to try going that route.

b. It takes a particular kind of personality to be good at sysadmin work. (And a lot of trial-and-error -- I just recently had to do an emergency server build due to a Debian update whoops, and I've been doing this stuff for a while.)

c. I usually recommend BackupPC (http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/) for easy set-it-and-forget-it backup infrastructure. It's compatible with everything, it will notify you if there are problems, it does pooling and de-duplication and compression, it's fast and reliable, and you can usually store months of backups on a small offsite server. I store 12 months of all hosted and customer data with it, and we've used it to meet other clients' needs too.

d. If you need affordable help, let me know. I'm way too cheap, and I do this stuff all day, every day. I opened a business specifically to address problems like this: needs something, money is a problem.

That goes for anybody else too. If your lack of backups is keeping you awake at night, or if you've suddenly outgrown your infrastructure, or if looking at config files gives you an ulcer, get in touch with me. I'll help you out.