[Discuss] Backup linux desktops/workstations

[blu at nedharvey.com (Edward Ned Harvey)]

> From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org [mailto:discuss-
> bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org] On Behalf Of Jerry Feldman
> 
> On 06/15/2012 09:01 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
> >> From: discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org [mailto:discuss-
> >> bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org] On Behalf Of Tom Metro
> >>
> >>> Must be able to backup the whole system. Including the OS, and all
> >>> the customizations...
> >> Do you really want to be doing that level of backup on a daily basis?
> > Yes, I'm trying to find a solution that makes linux as good as windows
and
> > mac.
> >
> >
> I've never had a Mac, but from What I recall, the onsite backup programs
> are expensive and suck. 

You must be operating on some very old information there.  For the last 5
years, Time Machine is free and great.  It is the model after which all my
other efforts strive to make win & lin backups measure up.  TM does hourly
full system backups in the background, with optional exclusions, and its
priority level is such that nobody notices or complains about any
performance difference.  I personally use it, and I personally don't notice
when it's running (unless I notice the spinning icon.)  I'm very prone to
noticing things taking resources, so that's a very good success.  As an
admin, I can do a complete system restore for somebody, or if they just want
an individual file, they click on time machine and have a nice GUI to browse
their filesystem backward in time.

Acronis for windows comes in second.  You pay (but it's not expensive) and
it takes quite a bit of finicking  to get the initial settings right, but
once you know what you're doing, you can easily configure a bunch of
machines quickly.  It runs complete system backups (with optional
exclusions) on a daily basis.  Its priority is such that most users don't
notice it at all, sensitive users notice a little bit, but even the most
sensitive users never complain about it.  The performance impact is minimal
and short-lived, even by my standards.  Again, I can restore a complete
system for someone, or they can browse their own filesystem back in time to
help themselves.

rsnapshot looks like a pretty cool & unique way of doing things.  Quite a
lot of good coverage there.  But it would be difficult to restore your OS
onto a new hard drive if you needed to.  (Same, etc, carbonite, mozy,
crashplan, etc).  For the moment, I'm testing someone else's suggestion to
use ionice with nice & dump & lzop.  I have yet to see the results of this
effort, but it certainly seems promising.  The big disadvantage of dump as
compared to something like rsnapshot, is that it's difficult to make any
solution where the user can restore their own files with dump.  In the past,
I've solved this problem by ... sending the dump stream over to the remote
side, where it is tee'd into a file, and also simultaneously restored into a
directory which is accessible to the user.  It's a waste of disk space but
I've never cared.  And all my scripting in this situation amounts to some
real amount of scripting.