OT: Backup Solutions

[Jean-Pierre A. Radley]

Boaz Bezborodko propounded (on Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 03:31:37PM -0400):

| > From: Bill McEachran <wj_mceachran at yahoo.com>
| >
| > I'm looking for advice on backup solutions for multiple servers.
| >
| > We've got a couple of database servers, a web server, a mail server,
| > a 'other communications' server, a server which handles Oracle
| > reporting, and one dedicated to Terminal Services.
| >
| > In my opinion, all of them are inadequately backed up.
| >
| > I'm looking for a solution that will: - Allow them all to backup
| > to one device and hit tape or some other media. IOW, something
| > manageable :-) .
| >
| >
| > Any suggestions of hardware or software appreciated.
| >
| > TIA,
| >
| > -- Bill McEachran
|
| I set up a system to backup our small system from my home so that the
| backup is offsite.  This may be a bit low-end for your application,
| but the hardware was very cheap, the location is offsite, and it gives
| me an easy way to get older data.
|
| In this case I use a hacked version of D-Link's 2-drive NAS DNS-321
| device.  I run Rsnapshot (http://rsnapshot.org/) on it so that I have
| daily backups for the last week, weekly backups for the last month,
| and monthly backups going back 3 months.  (You can get information on
| hacking the device by googling "funplug" and keep in mind that the
| DNS-321 is simply a DNS-323 without a USB connector.)  It calls the
| work server and pulls off all the changes (using RSYNC) onto it's
| drive.
|
| You can also back up the multiple servers onto separate directories on
| the drive.
|
| I used to use BackupEdge, but restoring a file from tape was a real
| bear and quite time consuming.  Now I simply FTP to my backup device
| and pull out whichever version of the file I need.
|
| The box is also set up to back up it's data to the other drive in the
| device.
|
| If the D-Link device is too low end, you can easily build up something
| else like it from any unix white box.

Can you restore the entire OS if need be, like you can with BackupEdge?
Is BackupEdge using ftp noticably slower than your use of ftp?

-- 
JP