Linux Backup

It is certainly possible, and you have a number of choices. Here are a few:

1. Buy a very expensive backup package (Legato, Arcserve or some such). You will have to find one which can handle linux as a server, not just a client.

2. Share out one machine's directories with nfs to the other machine, which then can back up everything as if it were all on local disks. (NOTE - This will probably NOT backup /dev correctly, so periodically do a real backup to a local tape drive on the second machine of / and /dev.)

3. Use a remote command to grab a tape drive on the second machine. Run cpio piped to rcmd/rsh/rexec (whichever is there) running dd on the remote machine. You will need the machine with the tape drive to grant remote execute permissions to the other machine. Note also that this method will not allow you to put data from both machines on the same tape. Here is an example (from an AIX machine, but the principle is the same).
find dir1 dir2 -fstype jfs -xdev -print > /tmp/backup/v2.org
cat /tmp/backup/v2.org | cpio -oc | rsh $hostbox "dd of=$tape obs=$block"

Good luck

Using a tape backup is going to be very inexpensive and in my opinion would be the best way to go. Goto this site ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/linux/kernel/tapes/and download the ftape-tools-1.08.tar.gz file. This is what you are looking for.

After that, try checking out http://www.linuxdoc.org (home of the linux how-to's.

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