[thelist] backup plan

[Richard Bennett]

On Tuesday 30 November 2004 15:17, evolt at mccullough-net.com wrote:
> Since
> we are looking at > 750GB of storage, we are looking at significant cost,
> both hardware and software.  We have looked at Windows NFS solution,
> Computer Associates, and Veritas.  I'm trying to see if there is a cheaper
> Linux based alternative.  Like using RSYCN and some other tools to
> accomplish the same thing.

That's what I did.
I setup an RSync server on a dedicated linux box, with hot-plugable harddisks 
in a RAID mirror.
I then run a simple shell script by cronjob each day on the machines that need 
backing-up (Windows/Linux servers,desktop and my laptop).
The backup is remarkably fast after the first initial mamouth upload. You can 
however copy the files by burning them on a DVD or something the first time. 
Experiment with this first though, 'cause you have to get the permissions 
thing right. 
If you have the same user-accounts on the backup-server as on your live 
machine, you can copy the whole account, permissions and all.
The trick is not to run the script as root, but as each user in turn.
What I like about Rsync is that it only copies the changed part of binary 
files, so if you have a 100mb binary file that has been altered, it will not 
copy the whole file, just the parts that have changed.
Also, it compresses the files while transfering them, but stores them on the 
server normally, as an exact copy of your local machine... that makes it 
really easy to get a file that had been accidentaly deleted or altered 
without needing to restore the whole backup.

HTH,

Richard.