Hi all

this is crearly not a linux question, but i like this forum ;-)

A friend of mine needs a data solution for his two-men company, NAS comes quickly to my mind, but the question is how to backup properly a 2 bay mirrored NAS?

- i dont want to buy another NAS and i need to do it in automated way and with recovery dates per file.(like shadow copy)

for example with a external HDD plug to the usb, or creating in the NAS another backup volume....

pros, cons, software needed, affordable models that support this config, another options?



regards

Personally, I back up my (2 bay mirrored) NAS the same as my workstation. I plug in an external USB drive and rsync over the files. I can't say I'm as meticulous as I should be in rotating the external drives and keeping one off site, but that would be my recommendation for a business. You can also easily do network backups using rsync, and use cron to automate the process.

I've put Slackware on my NAS, an older, pretty darn cheap iomega ix2-200 with an older ARM SOC so it's pretty straightforward in terms of using rsync. It has lasted for years, though I've replaced both disks as they've gone belly up. These things usually come with some custom version of debian which probably will have a built in backup program. Of course these things aren't usually kept current in terms of security updates etc., and they are what they are.

If you want to replace the software, do some research on how hard it is to replace the software. It varies a lot per model, but googling the particular model/chip can help. The Slackware Installation forum has a couple of threads devoted to installing on headless ARM kits. If you want more flexibility and are willing to spend more money and electricity, there are intel based NASes that even run embedded Windows. Yech. On the other hand it's probably easier to upgrade those to the distro of your choice.

1 members found this post helpful.

thank you

i was talking with them, and they told me to only plug the external hdd once a week on friday to do the week backup, so maybe the built-in backup apps can do the full-backup + versioning/dedup isn't?

regards