Using RSYNC for Multiple Servers

[jw schultz]

On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 12:20:01PM +1000, Cameron Young (Atinera) wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Am wanting to backup three servers to a AIT tape device that is connected to
> a SCO 5.0.5 server.
> Apart from itself, there is one other SCO 5.0.5 system and a Slackware Linux
> server.
> 
> Is it possible to use RSYNC to backup all three servers from the primary SCO
> server to the tape device ?
> 
> I wish to append to the tape device also for incremental backups.
> 
> Any other suggestions appreciated.

Rsync is for syncronizing files and file trees.  You cannot
syncronize a tape device with a file tree.

That said, rsync can be useful as a part of a larger backup
and archive system.  If you have sufficient disk space
(cheap these days) on your backup server you can use rsync
to make a fast snapshot copy of the production space and
back that up on tape at leasure.

One of the real advantages to rsync is that it tends to be
much faster than tape backups so the impact on the
production environment is much smaller. 

There is more than one tool (dirvish is mine) out there that
can manage disk based backups that are superior to tape
except for the removability.  Adding tape to one of these
for offsite and archive is a very sensible backup strategy.

-- 
________________________________________________________________
	J.W. Schultz            Pegasystems Technologies
	email address:		jw at pegasys.ws

		Remember Cernan and Schmitt