[Scottish] Backing up

[Will Partain]

David Irvine <Maillist@glasgownet.com> writes:

> What backup stratagies are people using? And what pitfalls/benefits do
> they have?

* First line of defense: RAID

* Second line of defense: rsync home dirs and things nightly
off of server and onto spare disk on random machines; I can
then get to this via /yesterday/home--partain/.

(Remember that disk is nearly as cheap as tape these days,
and *way* more convenient.)

* Third line of defense: run Amanda
(http://www.amanda.org/), with full dumps once a week to
tape (kept off-site), and with incrementals left on disk the
other weeknights.  To read an Amanda tape/blob, you need sh,
mt, dd, and tar (or dump).

If your site has more than, say, 6000 servers, Amanda won't
be able to cope.

Obviously, there are Arusha Project
(http://ark.sourceforge.net/) bits that help w/ most of
that.

Will