backing up thousands of systems, each containing a couple of GB, over analog lines

[Ron Arts]

Hello all,

I am investigating using rsync to do a nightly backup of
a couple of thousand of linux servers each containing
a postgresql database that may grow up to a few Gigabytes.

Most of these servers are behind analog or ISDN dialup lines,
this can't be changed (no broadband available).

The databases do not change much during the day.

Questions in my mind:

- is rsync the right tool for this job?
- Am I right in thinking that I/O would be the limiting problem
   on the serverside?
   Having hundreds of more clients connected at the same time
   means having to compute checksums of hundres of files at the
   same time.
- How well does this scale up?

Does anyone have any experince with such setups?

Regards,
Ron Arts
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