Re: OT - Backup of HA server on external drive
Ivan Marin <ispmarin@gmail.com> writes:
> Hi all,
>
> I have to make a backup plan for a server that is physically very far away from
> me right now. If for some reason this server goes south, I have to have a plan
> and it has to be done quickly. The problem is that the personnel that is on
> site doesn't know squat about Linux (or computers, for that matter), so it must
> be something dead simple. I was thinking of getting a spare hard drive, connect
> it to the working server, do a dd of the entire disk to the new disk, and
> disconnect the disk (the people there can swap hard disks). Something like
>
> dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=1024
dd is a nice tool, but it is a bit low level for this type of task.
Linux isn't windows where the latter is picky about being moved around.
Why not format and mount the new disk and use "cp -ax" to shift the
data? That way the filesystem can lay everything out nicely and your
new disk could be a different size.
> assuming that sda is the working disk and sdb is the new, unformatted and
> unpartitioned disk. So if hte machine breaks, I can get the new disk and put in
> a new machine and everything should work. This server is doing firewall and
> openvpn, etc, no X, no fancy stuff. Is this going to work? What do you guys
> think?
>
> Cheers!
>
> Ivan
--
Johan KULLSTAM
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