good snapshot solution

[jw schultz]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2003 at 05:44:48PM +0200, bart.coninckx at sita.be wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I have installed rsync 2.5.5 as daemons on our 35 Netware servers (no 2.5.6
> is yet available for Netware) and do a daily sync from a Linux Rsync client
> machine with 1.2 TB disk capacity. For the moment we do a daily, weekly and
> monthly backup on tape of this machine, but I'd like to replace the daily
> backups by a disc-based setup. It would be good to be able to share the
> snapshot-folders with Samba, so our helpdesk can easily do restores. They
> are not trained in Linux.
> 
> After doing some research I found three candidates:
> 
> - Dirvish
> - Rlbackup
> - Rsync_snapshots by Mike Rubel
> 
> The first two seem to be pretty elaborate, but are based on Rsync 2.5.6 and
> I'm wondering if that's going to give problems with the Rsync 2.5.5 on
> Netware. Can one safely mix versions? I use only these options:
> -rtv --delete --modify-windows=2

If the backup server initiates the rsync you can use older
versions of rsync on the backup clients.  Dirvish works this
way, i'm not sure about Rlbackup.

> Also, I was wondering if can still share the snapshotted versions of the
> files with Samba in an intuitive way. Dirvish for instances seems to use a
> certain subdirectory system making that somewhat more complex.

Intuitive is a subjective term.  I'm sure dirvish would
support almost any way you would like.  A discussion of that
is not appropriate for this list.

> The last one is very straight forward and looks sufficient, but Mike points
> out that he sees this only working for smaller servers, so I worry a bit
> about our 900 GB in data. Would this systeem know how to handle this amount
> of data?

I'm not sure why, or where, he says that.  I'll grant that
the configuration might not scale well for Mike's snapshot
approach but otherwise it should be no more limiting than
dirvish or rlbackup.  I know of more than one site using
dirvish for hundreds of servers with multiple terabytes of
backup data.


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

		Remember Cernan and Schmitt