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I want to know what is the best software to clone the operating system so that I can restore it when I want.
I need something that restores the whole operating system files and configurations.
I don't want to re-install Linux and edit the configuration again, I need something that restores the whole operating system with its configurations.
Also at the same time I want a program that does disk mirroring.
What is the best solution? I will need it for many servers.
I read about cloning programs like Clonezilla but I think it only does cloning to the system, no mirroring. Do I need another software to do real time mirroring? Or is there a software that does both?
What about Raid software (mdadm)?
Sorry for asking many questions I am new to Linux.
Yes you'd do mdadm for disk mirroring (RAID 1) at software level.
You can use Mondo Rescue for doing the OS backup. It will even include the RAID setup you configure with mdadm so the restore will recreate mirrors. http://www.mondorescue.org/
"I need something that restores the whole operating system files and configurations."
That tends to be answered with things like clonezilla.
A raid is one way to protect systems if used properly. I like hardware raid controller cards myself but any backup or image or secondary data location is a part of data protection.
There are some commercial live state backup applications that could be run on some schedule.
Some people use rsync and a few others to keep files up to date but that isn't exactly a way to clone and backup usually.
Backing up and disaster planning is always a difficult issue. Some programs are very difficult to get a point in time where one can save data. This is where the raid choice helps a lot. Big companies use raid and backups to protect data.
And just to be clear. Doing mirroring or any other RAID is no substitute for doing backups. Mirroring protects you in the event of a total hard drive failure but wouldn't protect you from a file that got corrupted or deleted as such corruption or deletion will occur on both mirrored drives (e.g. if someone runs rm -rf / the mirroring software would have no reason to assume they meant it for one drive but not the other). Also mirroring wouldn't protect you if say your server caught on fire and both drives got slagged. Backups allow you to restore from a known good state.
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