On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 11:59:01AM +1000, Simon Bryan wrote: > Hi all, > I now have (or will soon have) up to 180GB of user data I need to backup, > currently it is under 4GB but users have just been given much larger home > directories that I am sure they will fill, as well I am adding a 70GB drive > for curriculum resources.
Simon, Unfortunately, every situation is different - my solution may not work for you, and it may work for Dazza.... Being a school, do you need to do weekend backups ? Here's the schedule I use at work (an Insurance company with something like 42 odd (VERY odd !!) Windows boxen in the computer room).... One important thing to realise is the difference between a DIFFERENTIAL and an INCREMENTAL backup (I still get them confused at times). Differential only backups up what's changed from one day to the next (i.e. Monday's differential will backup Monday's changed files. Tuesday's differential will backup any files that have changed between Monday and Tuesday, etc...) Incremental is a progressively longer backup each day (i.e. Monday's incremental backs up Monday's changed files. Tuesday's incremental backs up Monday's changed files PLUS Tuesday's changed files... etc.... So - here's what we use - a 4 week tape rotation cycle, with a permenant FULL backup taken on the last working day of the month (if the month finishes on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday - this backup is Friday night, if it finishes mid-week, then the first Friday of the following month). The permenant tapes are archived off-site for 10 years (when we probably won't be able to read the bloody things anyway). Monday night - Incremental - Monday's files Tuesday night - Incremental - Monday's files, Tuesday's files Wednesday night - Incremental - Monday's files, Tuesday's files' Wednesday's files Thursday night - Incremental - Monday's files, Tuesday's files, Wednesday's files, Thursday's files Friday night - FULL BACKUP - all archive bits reset The following week the cycle repeats on tape set #2 - this continues for 4 weeks, then set 1 is re-cycled (which is after the permenant full backup is taken, usually but not always) This means that a restore SHOULD require only one tape, or a full and an incremental in some circumstances. I started this system 3 years ago and it hasn't failed yet, although the cost of tapes is pretty high initially, it's saved our bums a few times (especially when Windows lusers delete their home drive "No, I didn't delete it - it must have been the network...") A possible option for you, with the availability of cheap 160Gb+ drives these days, is a backup server with 100Mb full duplex (or gigabit if you can afford it !!) which "mirrors" the data from your main server overnight, and then backups can be done from this box during the day. Of course, a backup server with a removable drive caddy, configured (for example) as /dev/hdb, with a few removable drives (one per day) would be a faster, but probably more expensive, option than the backup server/tape combo... As for software, I've had good results with Arkeia, BRU, and (believe it or not) ArcServe for Linux - but I still fall back to good ol' tar or cpio for most of the work.... Hope this gives you a few ideas - contact me off-list if you want the obscenely Windows-based details of our system...:-) Jon -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
