Re: [OT] Backup solutions - my preferences
On Thu, 2003-03-20 at 14:54, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 01:04:08PM -0800, Alvin Oga wrote:
> > i dont have time to play with tapes.. daily changing it..
> > - forget one day... and you're hosed
>
> Haven't used amanda, have you? Just set yourself up with a
> decent-sized holding disk and it's not a problem. (Your backups will
> finish fast, too.) My amanda server at work can easily run a week's
> worth of backups without needing a tape, just saving it all up on the
> holding disk. Just be sure the holding disk is a separate physical
> device to minimize the chance of losing it if the system's primary
> drive fails.
That's the way I use it - flush the backups to tape every Saturday
morning. Downside is that you can lose a week's data is/when the holding
disk dies.
> > i prefer 100GB - 1TB of disks to be backed up to other disks ...
> > ( tapes are too small for "full backups" and definitely too slow )
> >
> > - i want the backup to be live within a few minutes
> > of the main server going down for whatever reason
>
Yup. Different philosophy. If you want fast, random access to the backed
up data, tape is definitely not the medium of choice. If you want to use
the backup only for restores, disks are way too expensive.
One of the major benefits of amanda is that backed up data are stored in
a "well known" format (GNU tar or cpio - your choice). So in case of
major disaster, you don't even need the amanda software for a bare metal
recovery; a floppy with a tape driver and tar/cpio is enough. So I'm
told - haven't been there (yet).
Another cool solution, in some situations, is rsync. I've set up rsync
to use an ssh connection to sync files over the Internet. The first
time, rsync will copy the entire file. After that it copies only the
differences - takes only a few seconds to maintain an offsite copy of
the company books, a 4.5MB file.
http://www.rsync.org/
http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/tech_report/node2.html
> I don't care how (or even if) you back it up.
If it's a playpen computer, don't worry about it.
If it's for real, I do care. Is the only copy of 10 years of your bank
account(s) on your disk? Is the computer a server with lots of
fine-tuned config files? *Please* back up, and do a good job of it. My
heart sinks when I have to tell somebody they've just lost vast
quantities of data, and there's nothing to be done about it except maybe
to go through years of bank statements and re-enter it all by hand.
--
Glenn English
ghe@slsware.com
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