Tim,
No problem! Like you, I spent a while trying to wrap my head around the
way I was running BackupPC, to make certain it was a realistic
procedure. I'm glad to see others have come to use similar methods!
For the future I plan on implementing your method of disk rotations,
with the secondary external disk array. My only worry would be messing
up the disk labels, but I can tackle that when the time comes.
Another growth issue I have with BackupPC is scaling. What do you plan
to do when you've got hundreds of backup hosts?
Here, we're a small tech startup so I don't have much to worry about
(yet). We are growing very fast so I want to at least have an idea laid
out for what is to come.
Currenty we've a network with one subnet (10.20.30.X). My plan is (and
feel free to pick at this) to have one BackupPC server *per* subnet,
with adequate storage for all the users. Then back the subnet servers
via BackupPC to one huge server that will be hosted on the back plane of
the network (hopefully fiber by that point!). I'd then have to decide
how I'd rotate disks off site. Perhaps I'd rotate them on a per subnet
basis, instead of rotating them from the top most server? Or, perhaps
not even *having* a top most server and simply rotating disks out of
each respective subnet backup server?
Ex. (Data flow: <- )
BigDaddy
^--(BPC Server) 10.20.1.254 <- 10.20.1.[1-253]
^--(BPC Server) 10.20.2.254 <- 10.20.2.[1-253]
I think this distributed method of backing up hosts will allow me the
flexability I need to manage (or by that time, have someone *else*
manage) the backup system. Hopefully by then I'll be face down in the
sand on a beach somewhere tropical. ;)
What do you think?
- j
Justin R. Pessa - BOFH
Brontes Technologies
400 West Cummings Park Suite 2600
Woburn, MA 01801
tel: (781) 756-1700 x248
www: http://www.brontes3d.com
irc: irc.freenode.net | asdf_ on ##freebsd
Tim Chipman wrote:
Thanks for this information - I'm glad to hear that there are workable
solutions! :-)
Where I worked before, we had a safety depost box at the nearest bank for our
"offsite secure site" -- it actually worked very well. Not sure if you have
that option though. (it was comparatively a cheap solution too, but did require a weekly
trip to the bank by a sysadmin..)
Anyhoo. Thanks for your comments - much appreciated.
Tim
-----Original Message-----
From: "Justin R. Pessa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Tim Chipman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 17:20:26 -0500
Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] Q: Offsite copy-backup to removable SATA HotSwap
LVM Sets?
Tim,
My backup pool is much smaller, but what I do is very similar.
I've got 2 400gb sata disks in a Raid1 array. Daily backups go to these
disks where 2 fulls and 5 incremental are saved.
I've also got one removable 400gb disk bay in a 5.25" bay. I use 15
disks and rotate Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and on the forth week insert a
monthly disk. I wrote a simple bash script that copies my backuppc mount
point onto this removable disk weekly.
When I get in on Monday (assuming I didn't get an email about a failed
dump) I do the following:
1. Stop BackupPC
2. Unmount its partition (the partition I took the dump of).
3. Mount the removable disk to /mnt/disk
4. mount -o bind /mnt/disk/Backups-Jan_14_2006/backuppc to /var/lib/backuppc
5. restart BackupPC.
So at this point I've got BackupPC running on the backup disk in the
removable disk bay.
I log into BackupPC's web interface and then restore a full backup to an
rsync share I have on the backup server, on another disk, and check the
data.
When this is complete I can assume the backup can be trusted, and I mark
in my log book that this backup was successful.
My weekly disks stay in house in a safe and the monthly disks are moved
off site. I'm looking into an off site storage service like AmeriVault
for redundancy.
Your process is much like mine, but on a larger scale. I think your best
bet to reduce the number of disks being moved around is to use the
largest disks you can. I have a few 500gb disks, but the majority are
400gb.
Either way, I'd rather deal with disks than tapes! :)
Justin R. Pessa - BOFH
Brontes Technologies
400 West Cummings Park Suite 2600
Woburn, MA 01801
tel: (781) 756-1700 x248
www: http://www.brontes3d.com
irc: irc.freenode.net | asdf_ on ##freebsd
Tim Chipman wrote:
I'm trying to determine if a particular approach might work for "offsite backup
copy" of BackupPC data store, more-or-less based on a matched pair of hot-swap SATA
LVM disk sets.. and specifically I was wondering if anyone else does something thus?
ie: (numbers are for illustration only..)
-assume BackupPC is storing data locally on a raid disk array, call it a
~500gig pool for illustrative purposes.
-independant of the raid array disks for above data, we have a 4-bay sata
hot-swap disk set(4x200gb = 600gb in raid 5 LVM) and also a second (spare) set
of (identical) disks in trays (4x200gb = 600gb in Raid5-lvm)
-once per week, data is copied from ~500gb local pool into the 4-sata disk
hot-swap volume. When done, this raid array is taken offline, and the [well
labelled :-)] disks are pulled and transferred to a secure offsite location.
-spare set of [well labelled :-)] 4-SATA disks in trays come from offsite
location, insert to backupPC server, mount the raid. We're ready to repeat
process.
Additionally, I suppose - based on how quick the data pool evolves, rsync could
be used to update the (rotating disk pool raid5 data) which might be faster
than doing (reformat and clean copy) each week. Or maybe not.
Just curious if anyone does something like this; if there are obvious issues or
the like.
(Clearly it gets a bit cumbersome for a data pool that is too large .. lugging 20 SATA
disks wouldn't be fun .. but for "reasonable" data pool size it ?seems? like it
could be feasible?)
Many thanks,
Tim Chipman
-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files
for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes
searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK!
http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=k&kid3432&bid#0486&dat1642
_______________________________________________
BackupPC-users mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users
http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files
for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes
searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK!
http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=103432&bid=230486&dat=121642
_______________________________________________
BackupPC-users mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users
http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
