> I see several threads about how people are cloning their Venti > servers to remote Venti servers as a means of creating a backup.
Personally, I use three different ways of replicating the content of my Venti file servers. 1. The first method is to use venti/mirrorarenas to replicate the content of a Venti arena partition to another hard disk. venti/mirrorarenas /dev/sdE0/arenas /dev/sdE1/arenas This method requires two hard disks and two identical arena partitions. 2. The second method is to copy blocks from a Venti arena partition to a Venti server running on another machine, accessed through the local network. You'll find an example of script using this method here: http://9legacy.org/www.9legacy.org/9legacy/tools/backup/readwrite This method requires another machine running Venti. The partition layout could be different and the Venti servers could be running on different operating systems. 3. The third method is to copy blocks from a Venti arena partition to arena files, using venti/rdarena. Then you can copy the arena files to external media like Blu-ray discs or hard disks. The restoration is done to a running Venti using venti/wrarena. You'll find backup and restore script examples here: http://9legacy.org/www.9legacy.org/9legacy/tools/backup/read http://9legacy.org/www.9legacy.org/9legacy/tools/backup/write This method require external media to store the arena files. For example, I use all these three methods to replicate the data of my main file server. Consequently, the data are replicated on: - two machines (automatically) - two hard disks of each machine (automatically) - some external hard disks (manually) -- David du Colombier
