The biggest problem with all the backup solutions that do exist require loads of hardware and resources to actually work. What I was looking for - was a small solution - not requiring loads of resources, simple to set up - and providing a reliable backup of important data. This is what Stargate's backup script is providing.
The main features of the system are:

• Compress files before writing them into the archive (e.g. you can recover part of the files if the archive is corrupt)
• Does not compress files that are already compressed. Speeds up the backup process. Also gives the possibility to choose specific file extensions to not compress.
• Ability to exclude files/directories using wildcards
• Generates a report - sent out to root through cron The report also shows the actual configuration settings. Check out the attached example reports - taken from a real-backup environment
• Perform full,mirror and incremental backups (controlled through cron)
• Archive rotation is included, e.g. rotate archive X times before deleting them.
• Quiet mode operation if requested
• simple easy installation and configuration
• Script locking - to prevent the backup script is started more than once.

Requirements: The following programs need to be installed - afio, bzip2, sed, awk, find, bash. Any Linux system should have these installed (afio needs to be explicitely installed).