Newbie Backup Question
 

I have been asked to setup an email server for some of our clients, and after searching around have decided to go for a package running on a Linux system.

The drives will be 2 x SATA 500GB configured as raid 0.

What we want to do is have an identical system running along side the primary server as a backup so that if anything happens to the primary server, we can switch to the backup server without interuption of service.

Does anyone know of any mirror applications that would allow us to do this, or a better way of doing it.

We want ot provide redundant systems not just for the hard drives but for the entire server.

Thanks

Here is a link to a few backup solutions. I hope one of them proves useful to you.
http://www.linuxlinks.com/Software/Backup/

You can build another server, make sure everything works with the raid array on the new server, and if and when one server breaks you can just plug the array into the scsi card on the new server. You would need an enclosure for the SATA drives, a scsi cable, and a scsi card in both machines. I might recommend 4 250 Gb drives over 2 500 Gb. That way you order 5 drives, and if one breaks it is a lot cheaper to fix the array than with huge drives.

Thank you for your replies.

Having the drives housed externally would be a very good option, if the server became non-functional, however this does not provide me with an adequate backup should the drives fail.

I seem to remember the Novell Netware used to have a system called SFT III that would allow to servers to sit side by side with one copying/mirroring the other, and then in the event that one crashed the second one could just take over.

I am not too worried about having a little downtime on the servers, but in the event of a catastrophic hardware failure, I need to know that I can get a server up and running again ASAP, and without loss of data.