[PLUG] RE: Mirroring and backup - recommendations?

Ted Mittelstaedt tedm at toybox.placo.com
Mon May 13 08:53:01 UTC 2002


:-)

I think your question is "how do I do cheap backups" ;-)

Frankly I think you should at least think about tape.  You can get
used 4mm DAT drives that are 12MB uncompressed for about $250 used.
Unlike hard drives tapes don't crash.  Also the most valuable part
of backup (I've found) is when someone needs a file that was backed
up months ago.

I realize 4mm tape drives aren't 100% reliable but if your regularly
backing up then the occasional messed up tape won't matter.

But if you can't afford tape then what I'd recommend is instead of
trying to create a backup server and guessing what you need, I'd take
that P233 and a sheet of paper and attempt to build a server on the
233 that duplicates exactly the 1Ghz AMD system.  As you are building
this server, everytime you find yourself referring back to the
original server for some piece of information, write it down on the
paper.  Once the new server is exactly identical to the old one then
you will have a list on the paper of what you need to backup.  Then
if you want to do it real time you can set up a script with scp
statements in it.  (ie: rcp except encrypted)


Ted Mittelstaedt                                       tedm at toybox.placo.com

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Greg Long [mailto:klugger at maneuveringspeed.com]
>Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2002 9:47 PM
>To: PLUG; KLUG; pdx-freebsd at toybox.placo.com
>Subject: Mirroring and backup - recommendations?
>
>
>After a recent scare with having to run e2fsck manually on our server
>after a unclean unmount, I started thinking more seriously about
>mirroring and automatic scheduled backups, and other such redundancy.
>
>Our server runs a fairly stock Redhat 7.2 on a 1ghz AMD Duron 256mb
>system with a 60gb IDE HD available. At my disposal is a Intel Pentium
>233 system with 128mb RAM and a 10gb UDE HD.  the 10gb drive should be
>plenty to essentially mirror the main system, with the exception of a
>sizable chunk of  files that have been made available for FTP transfer
>that would not have to be mirrored as they are easily replaceable.
>
>I realize that not ALL files should be mirrored as the hardware is
>different (although both can run i386 Redhat)
>
>SO....my basic question is, what utilites are available and recommended
>for this sort of mirroring?
>
>Although I do not have a tape backup, it would be nice to periodically
>take a snapshot of the system (except for the sizable file transfer
>library) and split that into 700mb chunks for manually burning to CD
>
>Thanks,
>
>Greg Long
>
>
>




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