On Tuesday 31 January 2006 09:10, Troy Engel wrote:
> >From the longtime experience direction, be sure to figure out the
> snapshotting upfront; a good snapshot rotation can save you so much pain
> it's not funny; many commercial NAS (NetApp, SnapServer, EMC, etc) have
> this integrated. When looking at a DIY linux NAS, you may have to roll
> it up.
>
> We snapshot roughly like so: [8a,12p,4p M-F] [nightly 2 nights
> retention] -- this setup is enough to provide instantanious file restore
> without having to deal with the backups. (classic "hey IT, I deleted a
> file last night...")
We've combined our contractual requirement for nightly off-site backups and
snapshotting using Linux and rsync. I've put it together into a project
written in PHP that you're free to use:
http://www.effortlessis.com/backupbuddy
It uses the hard link option of rsync to minimize disk usage for unchanged
files, resulting in great incremental stores on fairly modest disk usage.
It saves backups on a power of two (or three, if you want), EG:
Today,
Yesterday,
Two days ago,
Four days ago,
Eight days ago,
Sixteen days ago...
[repeat until disk space expires]
I've created a web-based tool that allows for recovery when the inevitable
"Hey, I deleted a file last week..." request is made, I just give them a URL
and they handle it themselves. (However, due to its nature, it's not part of
the bbuddy release)
I'm about to release an update to this script that handles expiring old
branches more sanely, so you may want to wait until the next release comes
out. (I'm waiting to see that it's stable before I release, and given the
nature of backups, that might take another week or two)
Combine this with samba (Read-only) and perhaps LDAP authentication for
another variation on this theme.
-Ben
--
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- XEROX PARC slogan, circa 1978
