Doing backups

[Kai Backman]

Just moved the thread over from the old Dexterity forum here.

I'm just moving over to a new IT system and in the process I needed to move all of my business related computers to new physical machines (dedicated WWW, local SVN and mail server, personal workstation). This got me doing some research and here is my current game plan:

- RAID on both the local server and personal workstation. Just to add one layer of robustness that is pretty cheap today.
- Run Bacula (www.bacula.org) on the local server. Back up both the dedicated and the workstation to the local server daily or more often.
- Back up daily (hourly?, haven't tested this yet) to set of changeable HDs (3) that are rotated off-site every few days.
- Burn incremental backups on CD for permanent off-site storage every week.
- Mirror the MySQL database on the dedicated server to the local one in real time over a SSH pipe.

My data priorities were (in order):
- MySQL database on WWW server
- Configuration of dedicated server
- SVN repository for projects
- Mail and files
- Operating software

BTW. If you just need to back up a single workstation and you have enough network capacity you could use a remote backup solution. I used to back up to Backup Solutions and they worked nicely for me (just needed to restore once). http://www.backuphelp.com/.

Now I just need to get myself backed up somehow .. Maybe kids? ;)

[GBGames]

Wow, I was just doing my own research on this topic!

I am looking into backup solutions for my main Linux machine. I have about 70GB of movies, mp3s, and other data that I need to backup. I could get a second hard drive, but that's only the physical medium part of the solution.

I am also looking into what I can use for automatic updates. So far I have found a few resources on using tar, dump, or rsync along with cron.

Currently I am thinking about getting a second hard drive to rsync my important files nightly. One failed hard drive won't stop me then. My next step will be to get a DVD burner and make a regular backup of my files to removable media. That way the machine itself can go down and it won't hurt me too badly.

With the removable media, I can also look into getting a safety deposit box somewhere and voila, remote backups! B-)

However, the above isn't very sophisticated. rsync is just backing up files to a second location. If one file gets corrupted, rsync will back it up as well. If I don't realize this right away, I've lost a file. I guess that is what the periodic remote backups are for though.

I was also thinking about setting up a machine with massive amounts of HD space on it to act as a dedicated server for backups, but it seemed like a huge expense for very little gain. I'm still only backing up files to a second location, and it doesn't solve the corrupt file issue directly.

[Mithril Studios]

I just purchased Dantz Retrospect Professional (http://www.dantz.com/en/products/personal.dtml) and so far I really like it. I'm in the process of getting it set up to make daily backups to my DVD burner.

I chose Retrospect because I wanted something that was:
1. Automatic
2. Easy to use
3. Could burn to CD's / DVD's (Windows backup doesn't! :eek: )
4. Worked correctly

For the last, I've found if you change a file name, delete a file, or move a directory after you've been doing incremental/differential backups, come restore time you get dead files and directories being resurrected. Kind of confusing.

Anthony