I have a cheap IDE drive stuck in a caddy in the server. Every night, I
rsync the entire data file system (about 12 GB) to the IDE drive. That
way, if the server dies, I can yank the ide drive, stick it in my linux
workstation, and still give everyone access to the data if need be.
Rsync takes about 10-15 minutes to sync the data, after which I turn the
drive off. Rsync runs every night.
I also "dump to tape" (bru and Ecrix VXA-1) and rsync off-site to my
home box via ISDN/dialup.
I use unison for a small portion of the backup which needs to be
two-way. Unison has some real limitations (no preservation of
user:group info is a major problem) but it does bi-drectional sync.
I'd like to hear from other folks who use rsync for backup strategies.
--Yan
"Mark W. Eichin" wrote:
>
> Sweet. How had it been set up? two drives, same controller?
> different controllers? and how often do you run the cron job, or do
> you just have a (while true; do rsync; sleep; done) loop of some sort?
>
> I've suggested this general approach at a couple of startups; at the
> last one, we'd just gotten the machine set up when we got bought out
> and it became irrelevant, so it is nice to hear a story justifying the
> effort... especially the fast *restore* time; it's a good answer to
> the "oh, we just dump to tape" approach..
