On 03/11/2012 08:12 PM, Scott Walker wrote: > What do you guys recommend for backing up a small CentOS server in a > business environment. It will have (3) 300gb drives in a raid 5 array but I > don't anticipate more than about 25gb of data that needs to be backed up > each night. > I want a lot of backups with a rotation scheme that included daily, weekly, > and monthly copies. I want the daily copies of the data kept until the next > week, and the weekly copy being kept for four weeks, and the monthly copies > being kept for a year. > > The vendor is recommending a RD1000 Removable Disk device. This looks like > it has great specs. Each cartridge holds 160gb (non-compressed) and the > drive costs about $420 but seems that with each removable cartridge costing > $128, we may be limited to how many cartridges we could have, thus perhaps > not retaining backup instances as long as I like. > > I asked about a HP DAT160 tape drive. Each tape holds 160gb > (non-compressed) and the drive costs about $730, and each tape only costs > about $24, so it would be economical to have lots of backup instances saved > for a long period of time. > > I have been using tape and the backup rotation scheme mentioned above for > over 20 years. The vendor is telling me they don't recommend tape drives > anymore and all of their customers are using removable hard drive for local > backups. Am I missing something? My instincts tell me the tape drive is > the right solution for a system with a small amount of data, where the > system is used only from 8am - 5pm (so backup speed is not critical) and > where we want to save backup instances for a long time before overwriting > them. > > Any input would be welcomed. > > What do you consider to be a "long time" to keep backups on hand? Tape, and tape drives, have a bad reputation. They are difficult and time consuming to verify. I run my backups nightly to a hard drive using rsync. I use a directory named by the day of the week. I cycle through the seven daily directories until the 1st of the month when I run a complete backup to an monthly directory. Then for the next seven days I wipe the daily directories and start the cycle over again. A couple of minor variations to this plan should work for you. I don't know what your network configuration looks like so this may not apply to you. Here's a peek at the logic I use. # BUILD DATE STAMP Date=`date +%Y%m%d` echo "Date= \"$Date\"" # Rev. 5.6 start Day=`date +%a` echo "Day= \"$Day\"" DayNum=`date +%d` # Rev. 7.0 # IF THIS IS A SUNDAY USE THE CALANDAR DATE if [ "$Day" == "Sun" ];then Day="$Date" else # IF THIS IS THE 1ST OF THE MONTH USE THE CALANDAR DATE if [ "$DayNum" == "01" ];then Day="$Date" fi fi # USE THE DAY OF THE WEEK, EXCEPT FOR SUNDAY AND THE 1ST OF THE MONTH WHICH IS HANDLED ABOVE, AS THE DIRECTORY NAME Date="$Day" # Rev. 5.6 end # REMOVE PREVIOUS $Date DIRECTORY IF THIS IS THE FIRST USE THIS MONTH # Rev. 7.0 ENTIRE CASE STATEMENT ADDED case $DayNum in 02) echo "Removing /home/homebu/$Date directory" rm -rf /home/homebu/$Date ;; 03) echo "Removing /home/homebu/$Date directory" rm -rf /home/homebu/$Date ;; 04) echo "Removing /home/homebu/$Date directory" rm -rf /home/homebu/$Date ;; 05) echo "Removing /home/homebu/$Date directory" rm -rf /home/homebu/$Date ;; 06) echo "Removing /home/homebu/$Date directory" rm -rf /home/homebu/$Date ;; 07) echo "Removing /home/homebu/$Date directory" rm -rf /home/homebu/$Date ;; *) echo "Old $Date directory not deleted" ;; esac # TRANSER FILES -- _ °v° /(_)\ ^ ^ Mark LaPierre Registerd Linux user No #267004 _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos