Hi there --

I am looking for a disaster recovery solution where a snapshot of a server can be taken and saved to either one or multiple iso files. If there is a failure, I would then like to use the created images to rebuild the server either on the repaired system or on other hardware.

I tried using mondorescue, but it has proven to be very problematic with what I am hoping to accomplish. Does anyone have other suggestions? Thanks.

Hello,

There are several paths you could follow in my opinion, all depending on what your servers dynamic data change is. If for example you take a database server that only has database changes performed and for example on once a week a system update, then you could take an image of the whole system using for instance Clonezilla once a week. And for the rest, the more dynamic data, setup your server with LVM and take regular LVM snapshots of the partition your data is on.

LVM Snapshots TLDP
LVM Snapshot HowToForge

Another path you could follow is that of RSYNC which is pretty well covered in this article:

RSYNC snapshot

In taking into account the importance of your data you should change the time between backups depending on that same importance. In case of a 'crash' the maximum of data lost is that data saved after the last copy/snapshot/backup was made.

Hope this helps you in your search. Let us know what you go with and how your experience with it is please.

Kind regards,

Eric

Do these seem useful?

http://www.clonezilla.org/

http://ping.windowsdream.com/

http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

http://www.areca-backup.org/

http://www.bacula.org/en/

http://www.zmanda.com/amanda-community-edition.html

Let me add one more (commercial) product:

http://microlite.com

I used it for years on *cough* SCO and have been using it on Linux more recently.