Favorite Backup Solutions

Last week, I asked you PENGUINS about your favorite backup
solutions. I’ll include the responses here, and if anyone else has
something to share, I can include those the following week.
Otherwise, we’ll move on to another topic. There’s a good range of
material here, so let’s get started with Hook’s suggestions:

“You asked about backups. Well, I’ve got two Linux
servers and a Windoze machine. The main server (shadow) hosts six
domains and carries all the scripts, logs, and MySQL databases
that they need. ishtar, the other server is for development and
mucking about, as well as being a backup and development machine
for three local businesses that I do work for. The Windoze machine
is for office stuff, but all the data lives on a Samba partition
hosted by ishtar. There’s a new Vaio lurking about as well, but
that’s for writing and for running PuTTY over an encrypted
wireless link to the two servers.

“Backups go something like:

• shadow backups are at 01:00. It has two disks, and relevant
  pieces of each are backed up into a partition on the other disk in
  a two-week cycle.

• ishtar backups are at 02:00. It also has two disks and does
  the same “backup a onto b” as shadow. This includes the Samba
  partition. The last stage of the backup is to scp today’s backups
  from shadow, combine them with the more important of today’s on
  ishtar, and create an ISO image. If I remember, I drop a blank CD
  into the drive last thing at night, suitably labelled. In the
  morning, it’s written.

“ishtar hosts some fairly chunky data files/databases that get
their own backup onto CD - weekly - as a separate manual process.
A pack of 50 blank CDs lasts me about 6 weeks. I keep three
generations of backups offline, and two weeks online.

“It’s not as clumsy or confusing as it sounds!

“Oh, the next stage is to encrypt the backups, but that’s going to
get done when I get some time.”

Thanks Hook! Next, Sean Walberg shares:

“My favourite backup solution is AMANDA. It’s a client/server-based solution, each client has an Inetd-based agent, and the
backups can run from cron.

“What separates it from others is that it’s very good at making
sure everything is ready. That is, one of the tasks you run from
cron verifies that the server has enough disk space, has the
correct tape, and that all the clients are reachable. Restores are
also easy, the interface lets you go back through history and
select the files you want, at which point you’re prompted for the
relevant tapes. It’s also efficient, as it spools backups to disk
before shipping to tape so that you can back up multiple systems
in parallel, either specifying compression on the client, server,
or none.

“One other notable thing is that full filesystem backups are
spread throughout the backup cycle rather than all falling on a
certain day. Therefore, you can back up far more than one tape in
terms of aggregate storage, because even on a large network,
you’ve spread the full backups across the week.

“I currently run it at home, but at a former job, I had over 15
Unix boxes of various flavours (Solaris, Linux, HPUX, OSF) backed
up onto a single DDS-3 tape. Sadly, there is no native Windows
client; you have to use Samba to get those - not exactly a
reliable method.”

And, finally, Scott Nelson offers:

“Well, I wouldn’t call myself a PENGUIN, but I do
have a backup solution that might be considered unique by some. I
have a home network that includes a couple of different Windows
machines and my Linux box (which serves as my webserver). I also
have Samba running on that box. One of my Windows machines has
oodles of free hard disk space, so I back everything up that I
want to back up from my Linux box by simply “copy & pasting” it
via my Samba share to a directory on that Windows box.”

Anyone else have any favorites? Any cool scripts? Have a great
week, folks!