[sclug] Linux backup solutions

[ed]

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:59:32 +0100 (BST)
"David Newcomb" <david.newcomb at bigsoft.co.uk> wrote:

> I was wondering if I could pick your brains on a Linux
> compatible backup solutions.
> 
> I was previously using an OnStream IDE tape backup
> but they went out of business and we only have 3 tapes
> left. I need to find an alternative solution.
> We have 25-35GB of stuff which is backuped each night.
> It doesn't have to be tape, just something that's removable.
> 
> I was wondering if anyone had any advice.

my advice, give up on the tapes. they're not as efficient as
ide/scsi disks these days. they're slow. but from one point of view
it might be a little cheaper when you add the megabytes up. from looking
after hosts with a silly amount of files/directories is that you use a
mixture of tar/rsync to fixed/removable disks.

organise the backup structure, so imagine:

/mnt/nfs/working

/mnt/sdb1/backup

from the client side, rsync working to backup first. even if you have
only one host on your network, this is still worthwhile as rsync will
jump through the working copy much faster than tar ever could.

then, tar backup off to a snapshot if required. this is much better to
do from a dedicated backup box, if you have that luxury, it will avoid
adding load to the live host.

once you have this setup working for a couple of days you might notice
some system performance improvements, but it depends on your network
setup. this might not suit someone who has a single host that does all
the work, but it might improve qos if your hosts are heavily accessed.
it is safer to backup from a non-live copy of the data, but i guess you
know this already as the tapes take a while to get through all the data.

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