Not sure if this is the right forum for this but I figured I would give it a shot. We have a few remote linux servers spread around town(mail servers, web servers, squid boxes, etc etc). I'm wanting to implement some kind of remote backup system. Ideally I wanted one central server at my office with a good size HD. And the remote servers would either rsync over SSHD to the central server important config files or do some sort of iso image of the server to back it up. If something would happen to the hard drive of a server or whatnot I really dont want to spend the entire night reinstalling config files for software.

Good or bad idea to do remote backups over the internet? Got a better idea?

Justyn

why remote backups? it would take a long time and congest the network...

perhaps you should set up raid so that the data is mirrored on every write. that way if one HD goes you're still up.

why don't you just do it locally, get another box for each server that is dedicated to backups. It would save time and go faster (ie 100mb/s) as opposed to whatever the speed to your office is...

i dunno, backing up over a wan just seems a little impractical to me unless you have like 155mbs link speeds etc.

but if you actually wanted to do it that way, I imagine it would be as simple as a cron job.

Because alot of these clients are _CHEAP_. Your right it is impractical. But so is having to rebuild a .conf file. I'm not really wanting to backup a whole system. Mainly .confs.

Its hard to convice alot of our clients to get another server just dedicated to backups for each server. Thats why I wanted to go for a centralized approach.

I could use a cdRW/dvdRW/tape soultion but then I would either a) have to find someone to stop what their doing to put in a tape or cd/dvd. b) go to each site once a week or even once a day and do it myself. With some of my locations being 75 miles away and gas at over $2.00 a gallon I'm not too fancy with those thoughts :P

RAID is kinda out of the question unless I can find a cheap solution for some of the boxes. Alot of them are cheap little P3s for email/web servers for small businesses.

However the more I think about this approach from a security point I think I might just go with a backup box at each location where I cannot afford to have any downtime. Would the smart solution for that approach be rync'ng the data between each box and maybe a shell script to call up all the needed services from the command line if a main box went down?