Les Mikesell wrote at about 14:36:24 -0500 on Tuesday, June 2, 2009: > Jeffrey J. Kosowsky wrote: > > > > > > > > There's only a small difference in scale here (and it's not obvious > > > which direction) between rsync'ing a raw database file and rsync'ing an > > > image copy of a filesystem. There's probably not much of a practical > > > difference. > > > > Except that I have a lot of other stuff on my filesystem so I don't > > want to image the whole filesystem. > > That just takes some sensible planning...
Needs change, systems grow, systems added. Not all of us can afford to start with a lifetime of disk space... Not all of us have perfect foresight when we set up the system the first time... Suppose I want to change filesystems (say move to ZFS), exactly how do I do that now other than to do a file copy operation including hard links that could take the better part of a day or more, assuming it doesn't crash or slow to a crawl due to memory constraints. > > > I just want to image the > > backups. Also, not all filesystems support efficient methods for > > imaging a partially filled filesystem. > > Why is it that you are concerned about efficiency here, but not in your > mythical database system? I'm not talking about marginal efficiency. I'm talking about there not being a *practical* way to replicate a large Backuppc pool in any reasonable amount of time given the number of hard links other than imaging the entire filesystem. > > > Again, you are assuming a tight > > integration between the functionality and setup of the filesystem and > > the backup software whereas I want to abstract away any such > > requirements as much as possible even at the expense of some extra > > overhead. > > Somehow I don't see how having to install, tune, and maintain an > otherwise unneeded database fits into the concept of abstracting away > functionality. You have to live with filesystems anyway so you might as > well learn how to manage them. I don't see the any major requirement for tuning and maintaining a metadata database unless you are doing huge enterprise size backups. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ OpenSolaris 2009.06 is a cutting edge operating system for enterprises looking to deploy the next generation of Solaris that includes the latest innovations from Sun and the OpenSource community. Download a copy and enjoy capabilities such as Networking, Storage and Virtualization. Go to: http://p.sf.net/sfu/opensolaris-get _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
