On 3/14/17 10:54 AM, Glenn English wrote:
On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 12:38 PM, Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> wrote:David Christensen wrote:On 03/11/2017 07:10 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:I've vague ideas of what backup pattern(s) I might follow. I'm looking for reading materials that might trigger "I hadn't thought of that" moments. Suggestions?I didn't see anybody talk about incremental backup (the backup consists of current versions as well as earlier ones -- often earlier work can replace erroneous or lost current work. Or work you don't notice is gone for a few days.). There are 2 I know of, and one (and probably many more) that may do that:
Adding two:I've been using rdiff-backup for years - essentially it's time machine for linux. There's a little helper routine called "backup ninja" and a gui (works in a text window) called ninjahelper. It will do incremental backups across two machines, and knows how to set up jobs for mysql, postgress, and the entire file system. It takes a little work to set up (server and client), and it's a bit tricky to do recoveries (command line rdiff-backup commands) - but it does the job very well. It's great of recovering accidentally deleted files, and older versions of files. For full snapshots (e.g., crash recovery), I just use RAIDED disks, mirrored via DRBD to a failover machine.
If you're on a desktop machine, you might consider a cloud backup service. I recommend CrashPlan - there's a linux client, it will back up to other machines (local and remote) for free, and there's a very reliable, and cheap cloud backup (particularly nice pricing for backing up all machines in a household, with unlimited storage).
I use the first approach on our production servers, the second for all the machines at home (mix of Mac, Windows, Linux). My wife and I also run Time Machine on our Macbooks - there's a lot to be said for having backup that doesn't require having an external disk plugged in.
Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra