Backup Systems

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Permalink Reply by Chris Stark on February 1, 2008 at 11:27am

Backups are a sore spot in our operation. As the filesystems get into the multi-terabyte range, the backup media are just not keeping pace. What I do is use cron to create separate tarballs for each directory tree that I need backed up, then scp them to a central server with a big RAID. I don't do incrementals because I have too much on plate to be doing piece-meal reconstructions (and for now, I have the disk space to do this).

We don't use Postgres (yet), but MySQL, we do the same as you've mentioned: just a cron-initiated SQL dump. It's worked fine so far. Although I have not needed to restore due to disaster, I have restored these backups to different systems for development purposes without issue.

What we're lacking is any sort of off-site backup. How do you get multiple TBs off site on a regular basis without killing your budget?

Permalink Reply by Matt Goodman on February 19, 2008 at 10:38am

There are two backup apps that have worked in the field. The first is rdiff-backup and the second is Mondo Rescue. I've used Mondo Rescue in the past but switched out from using OpenSource solutions as I never could find one that was being actively developed and is somewhat robust.

I have, however, been working with Acronis TrueImage Server for Linux for quite some time. It's very robust, very stable, dynamically compiles kernel modules to suit the environment, and has great support (once you get past their thick Eastern Bloc accents).

The command line version of Acronis is very easily setup through cron-scripts and can do file-based or disk-based backup solutions. Oh, I forgot to mention that it is a bit pricey. I believe around $600.

Permalink Reply by Ken Mayer on August 15, 2008 at 9:55am

I've been using mysql-zrm for automating mysql backups. Pretty stable front end for the usual mysql utilities. I've even made a MacPorts port for it :-)

Permalink Reply by Ken Mayer on January 4, 2009 at 9:26am

Did your company ever deploy it? I was not particularly impressed with Zmanda. Their open source repos seem to languish and the value add of their enterprise editions is a pretty GUI. The only response I've ever got from posting patches is a sales call from an unmotivated rep.

It seems that beyond a certain scale, DBs set up a slave server and handle backups by replication.

John Atienza said:

my old company was going to implement Amanda Enterprise along with a tape library and offsite storage service...

Permalink Reply by Ken Park on January 5, 2009 at 11:56am

If you have both large filesystems and database to backup, I think what you are looking at is a combination of Amanda Enterprise and ZRM.