I am in the process of installing a file server for a client. They would like to have some kind of real time backup configured for it. Which one would be the best option

1. Setup raid.
2. Install on the first hard disk, use dd command and clone it on the second hard disk and then use cp command or some kind of mirroring software on a regular basis
3. Do backups using normal CD/DVD's and use some kind of cloning software to clone the 2nd hard disk once a week or so.

Your suggestions?


Thanks & Regards
Jay

This looks interesting: http://rocky.molphys.leidenuniv.nl/ look at smart backup

then raid would be the best solution.

Other options, rsync once or twice or... a day, using cron

You can also have a look at "rsnapshot". This is a backup solution based on rsync which creates backup snapshots of your computer(s). You can make several snapshots per day if you want. The method is very disk space efficient because of the use of hardlinks. Here is an article I wrote sometime ago: http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/...inux:rsnapshot

At home, I have a rsnapshot solution running based on a small Linksys NSLU2 "NAS" running custom software (uNSLUng) with an external 1 TB USB hard drive.

Eric

Another vote for rsnapshot. I use it at home (also to a Linksys Slug) and at work. It works very well.

For a business server I would suggest both: RAID and a backup plan.

I set up a straightforward automated rsnapshot system for myself. Basically I use two rsnapshot setups. One to backup important configuration and user files every three hours. Because rsnapshot uses rsync, the disk space requirements are nominal after the first few backups. I have two internal hard drives and I backup those important files to the second drive and to a different partition. The second part of my backup strategy requires a full backup to a hard drive I store in a small fire-proof safe. The second part is manual for me, but could be automated for a nominal cost.

If interested you can read more:

A Backup Strategy

Thanks for the reply guys, i have few more days to go through these, will keep you all updated

Thanks & Cheers
Jay

This is what i am planing to do

1. Install on primary harddisk
2. mirror it on a secondary harddisk
3. use normal cp command to copy user files from primary hard disk to the secondary backup hardiisk

Only questions is, how to make the secondary harddisk bootable?

Any suggestions/comments

Thanks
Jay

I can see this causing some problems down the road.

For starters, there is no redundant disk. If the primary disk goes bad, the system goes offline. Since you plan on mirroring a drive anyway, why not use RAID-1? It's easy to configure, always in sync, and easy to recover when a drive fails. (you can boot from either drive)

http://slackware.cs.utah.edu/pub/sla...EADME_RAID.TXT

Both primary and secondary disks are connected to same machine. What if your disk controller goes bad and corrupts both disks? For this reason, you should backup the system configuration and other important directories to a different media or workstation. Like the others in this thread, I recommend a rsync-based solution. Tar is also a good option if you plan on burning backups.

For example, you could use the following command to rsync your data to a server named "failsafe" over ssh (pubkey auth):
rsync -av -e "ssh -i /path/to/private_key" /important/directory username@failsafe:/backups/

It might not be a bad idea to burn off some critical files for safe keeping elsewhere:
tar -cvzf /path/to/output.tar.gz /path/to/important/directory
Then burn the output file to a disc using whatever method you feel comfortable with.

Both of these tasks are easy to script and place on cron, which makes life easy.

System configuration is easy, as this is just a file server, so configuring it wont be a problem, once i have setup the system i can backup the conf files. Its the user data which is more important here. So i thought of the above procedure.

Regardless of what you are backing up, your methods mentioned above fall short in a few categories.
1. You will be wasting time and space with cp.
2. Your data will not be protected by physical separation.
3. Your data will not be protected by physical separation. (sic)


I like to keep important data in three different places. You may think I'm paranoid, but I don't like taking risks. Especially when my pay check is involved.
a. Primary server with RAID
b. Backup server
c. Offsite (tape/DVD)

If you accumulate large amounts of data on your server (in excess of more than 5 DVDs) you may wish to look into installing or attaching a removable hard disk such as:

Internal:
[CENTER]KINGWIN KF-1000-BK 3.5" Internal hot swap rack
[LEFT]External:
[CENTER]Thermaltake BlacX ST0005U External Hard Drive SATA Enclosure Docking Station 2.5” & 3.5” USB 2.0 & eSATA

I tried setting up raid 1 , but getting some problems.

I have two SATA hard disks sda and sdb and i created the following partitions

used

so that my second hardisk partitions are the same as first hard disk

then i setup the raid

Installed slackware 12.2

Then did

Then edited lilo.conf and changed

boot = <something>

to

added

but when i run lilo i get this error

any one known why?

Everything is working fine now.