Jonathan Wilson wrote:
>
> Howdy,
>
> Now that we've spent a good deal of time setting up our system of servers, it's
>occurred to us that we should be dome something more rigorous then once a week manual
>"cp -a /etc /backup/$DATE"
>
> First off, we do NOT want to buy a commercial app like Arieka or BRU. We want to use
>Free Software, and will write it myself if we can't find something good enough.
>
> Also I'm NOT going to use tape. Hard drive space is cheap, and so are CDs. And
>faster, IMHO.
>
> That said, I've had a good look over freshmeat and found more then enough
>apps/scripts that use tar, cpio, ssh and various compressions... enough to satisfy me.
>
> So what I'm really concerned about is not the tools to do this with but the
>methodology of it.
OK, here are some reccomendations.
STRONGLY consider RAID. be it hardware or software. RAID 1 at a minimum,
RAID 5 preferred. With either of these, you get the high availability
you desire. after that, all other backups are a cakewalk. The only time
whem you would need significant downtime, given a nice RAID 5 setup,
would be the cracker possibility you mention. since at that point, there
isn't anything short of a ground up reinstall that is acceptable.
As far as that goes, You could consider setting up /usr, /etc, and any
other rarely changing mountpoints on a Read-Only device. Many drives can
be seat as such atthe hardware level. This dramatically reduces the
damage a cracker can do, as far as infecting system data. of course, if
you update system programs and data frequently, ths could cause some
downtime as you would need a reboot to add it. in that event, consider
mounting them read only. Less protection, but greater flexibility.
You indicate you have plenty of options of backup packages from
freshmeat (long live free software and it's developers!), so I'll assume
you have a plan for that. I personally would set a timelimit as to how
long backups are stored. perhaps a weekly system image could be done,
with user backups done weekly as well? Once amonth (depending on size
constraints of course), you could archive them to CDs or CDRW (cheaper
in the long term).
Well, that should give you some ideas. Remember the RAID option, IMO,
it is your best option when combined with regular backups.
Bill Anderson
PS: BTW, when doing those backups, you may wish to remount the given
filesystem read-only to protect against users adding data, or the backup
itsself corrupting the original data somewhow. If you specify a time
that this will be done, and ensure your users are notified, they will
gladly accomodate you.
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