[kwlug-disc] Backup and Recovery in the 21st Century

Fri Jan 8 23:08:35 EST 2010

Do a restore.  Having a correctly sized backup means bupkas if it won't 
restore.  The only reliable indicator of a good backup is a successful 
restore.

--Bob.

Bob Jonkman <bjonkman at sobac.com>         http://sobac.com/sobac/
SOBAC Microcomputer Services              Voice: +1-519-669-0388
6 James Street, Elmira ON  Canada  N3B 1L5  Cel: +1-519-635-9413
Software   ---   Office & Business Automation   ---   Consulting

Insurance Squared Inc. wrote:
> Not on a per backup basis.  But I have a look every few weeks and the 
> size of the archives vary - so worst case I'd be without it for a 
> couple of weeks if something failed.  And there's precious little that 
> can fail - an rsync running as a cron job.  It's worked for a couple 
> of years and if it breaks I catch it before too long. 
>
> Ont thing that did fail way back when was I'd have the nightly backups 
> and the archives on the same partition.  If I didn't clean up the 
> archives every month or so it would fill the partition.  Then no more 
> backups.  So now the archives and the backups go on different 
> partitions.  So if the archive drive fills up, I lose whatever 
> snapshots happen before I catch it.  But my nightly offsite backups 
> still work.  And to make it a bit more robust, I put those two 
> partitions on two different physical drives.  So nightly backups go to 
> physical drive A, partition 1.  Then those backups get zipped and 
> archived on drive B partition 2. 
>
> I like my system because it's reasonbly robust, handles backups and 
> archives, and was cheap and easy to setup.  And it's automated.
>
> Raul Suarez wrote:
>> Do you have a monitor to ensure the backup finished correctly?
>>
>> I've seen people finding out that the backup system had been failing for weeks when they needed it the most.
>>
>> Raul Suarez
>>
>> Technology consultant
>> Software, Hardware and Practices
>> _________________
>> http://rarsa.blogspot.com/ 
>> An eclectic collection of random thoughts
>>
>>
>> --- On Fri, 1/8/10, Insurance Squared Inc. <gcooke at insurancesquared.com> wrote:
>>
>>   
>>> From: Insurance Squared Inc. <gcooke at insurancesquared.com>
>>> Subject: Re: [kwlug-disc] Backup and Recovery in the 21st Century
>>> To: "KWLUG discussion" <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org>
>>> Received: Friday, January 8, 2010, 2:13 PM
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>>  
>>>  My office DB server sits in the back closet, I've
>>> dropped a couple of
>>> big drives into it.  Every night at 3am my webserver and
>>> desktops rsync
>>> any changes over to the server to drive A.  So I have a
>>> snapshop of
>>> last night.  Then on the backup server after the rsync is
>>> done I gzip
>>> everything and copy that daily snapshot to drive B.  Then
>>> once every
>>> couple of months I burn a couple of snapshots to a dvd and
>>> clean up
>>> drive B again.  
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Benefits:
>>>
>>> - it's automated.  and it's fairly fault
>>> tolerant.  If I forget to
>>> clean up drive B I lose my daily archives but not my last
>>> night's
>>> backup.  Easy to add another desktop into the process as
>>> well.
>>>
>>> Cons:
>>>
>>> - It's not meant to be a bare metal easy restore. 
>>> I'm just backing up
>>> data (/home directories and config files). And  after
>>> zipping I can fit
>>> my entire operation on a DVD.  I certainly don't have
>>> anything
>>> approaching 700gigs.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> But first and foremost, when it comes to backups, remember
>>> that HD
>>> space is cheap cheap cheap, so use it liberally.  
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> g.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Chris Irwin wrote:
>>> So it looks my Tape Library is no more. It is
>>> an ex-Tape
>>> Library.
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>> I thought I would ping the list to see what everybody else
>>> is doing for
>>> Backup and Recovery, both in terms of physical storage
>>> (I've got 700GB
>>> and growing) to software used.
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>> I'm currently thinking about buying a few 2TB disks to
>>> use as my
>>> physical media and swap them every week, then something
>>> like BackupPC,
>>> rsync, or rdiff-backup to dump onto whatever disk is
>>> currently mounted,
>>> possibly giving me nightlies within that week.
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>> For my Linux systems (read: important systems) restoration
>>> from a hard
>>> disk would be as simple as cp and grub-install from a
>>> live-cd. What
>>> about Windows and Mac OS? Are there any simple ways to
>>> restore those
>>> systems without having to fall back to restoring data on a
>>> fresh
>>> install? The Mac is my girlfriends primary work machine so
>>> downtime for
>>> reinstalling and re-licensing is rather undesirable.
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>> The Windows machine is a toy for games, but reinstalling
>>> everything on
>>> that is such a pain that I'd like to make restorations
>>> simple there too.
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>> Ideally I'd like to spend as little as possible on
>>> this, so things like
>>> LTO-4 drives are out of the question.
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>> -- 
>>>
>>> Chris Irwin
>>>
>>> <chris at chrisirwin.ca>
>>>
>>>   
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>   
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
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>
> -- 
> Glenn Cooke
> Insurance Squared Inc.
> (866) 779-1499
> www.insurancesquared.com
>
> Insurance Agent Discussion Forum:
> www.americaninsurancebroker.com
>
>   
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