Cross-Platform Backup Software

Kareem Shehata kareem-d+8TeBu5bOew5LPnMra/2Q at public.gmane.org
Wed Oct 3 19:32:21 UTC 2007


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org [mailto:owner-tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org] On Behalf 
> Of Ian Petersen
> Sent: Wednesday 03 October 2007 14:47
> To: tlug-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org
> Subject: Re: [TLUG]: Cross-Platform Backup Software
> 
> On 10/3/07, Kareem Shehata <kareem-d+8TeBu5bOew5LPnMra/2Q at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > 1)  What can I use to grab all of that data in a coherent way?
> 
> I think you'll find everyone on the list with an opinion will 
> have a different opinion on this matter.  I'm using 
> rdiff-backup, but considering switching to rsnapshot.  I 
> don't have a Windows machine to worry about, but I've heard 
> that both can be made to work on Windows (possibly under 
> Cygwin).  You might want to look at AMANDA, because, as I 
> understand, it's purpose-built for cross-platform, network 
> backups.  I also hear it's complicated, so it might be 
> overkill for a network of three machines.

I fully expect to be thrown a whole bunch of different answers to sift
through, but that should be expect for just about any non-trivial problem.
In this case, hearing what has and hasn't worked for different people would
be very helpful, as I can then figure out what applies to this situation.
For example: Bacula looks pretty neat, but I haven't heard of anyone
actually using it.  AMANDA would do the trick, save for the complexity and
that it doesn't natively support Windows clients (it pulls everything
through Samba).

> > 2)  Is it possible to just mount the drive to the server 
> and have all 
> > of the end devices backup to it through the network?
> 
> Yeah, you should be able to share the backup repository via 
> NFS or Samba and then have the clients dump stuff to it.  You 
> might want to try the other direction: have the backup server 
> go out to the network devices and pull the data.  A backup 
> needs to be fairly secure so you can rely on its integrity.  
> You might want to restrict access to it to the machine 
> containing the physical media.  I might be paranoid in that regard.

This is exactly the type of problem that I'm thinking of.  Since this is a
"production" server, how do I prevent the backup from suffering the same
fate as the data in the event of a disaster?

> > 3)  Will it be possible to read the backup format in other 
> tools and OS's?
> 
> Systems like rdiff-backup and rsnapshot just use a bunch of 
> files to store their backups.  In the case of rdiff-backup, 
> the incremental reverse-diffs are stored in a somewhat funky 
> format, but it's all well described on the homepage, and, in 
> the end, it's just a bunch of diffs in some files.  My point 
> is that, if you pick the right backup system, and the right 
> filesystem, you should be able to read your backups 
> indefinitely.  You may need to upgrade the filesystem if, for 
> example, you pick e2fs and find, say, five years from now 
> that the kernel will no longer support it.  In that case you 
> should be able to just copy the backup repository from one 
> filesystem to another using your favourite file-wrangling tools.

Yea, I'm not sure that I like the idea of individual file diffs.  It just
seems somewhat fragile, and that level of efficiency is really uncalled for
in this application.

Very good point about the filesystem.  I'd like the drive and backup system
as a whole to be readable on any system, which creates a few problems.  With
a 500GB drive, FAT32 is out of the question, and both NTFS and EXT2 limit
the options in terms of what systems can read them.  Is there a better
solution, or just use EXT2 and worst-case use a Live CD to read it?

Thanks again,

-kms

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