replicating a live directory

[Lasse Kliemann]

* Message by -Joao Miguel Ferreira- from Sun 2008-03-30:
 
> we are using rsync to produce a replica of our filesystem.
> 
> it's very important for us to be sure that the files replicated on the
> remote backup host are left in a consistent state as we may need to boot
> services from those files (configs, logs, etc)!
> 
> right now we use a 'greedy approach'... we stop all important services
> (dhcpd, squid, sendmail, etc) just to minimize the possibility of copying to
> the backup a file that was being written.
 
[...]
> We would really like to leave all those important services up but we are
> really affraid of producing a corrupted replica...

Use filesystem snapshots.

Linux supports them via LVM. 
Solaris and FreeBSD offer them too.

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