On 8/29/06, James Dickens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
ZFS + rsync, backup on steroids.
If you combine this with a de-duplication algorithm you could get really space-efficient backups. Suppose you have 100 (or 1000, or 10000) machines to back up that are the same 3 GB OS image + mixed bag of apps + various prod/non-prod copies of databases + per-machine customization. Wouldn't it be nice if the backup server would store figure out that each machine is mostly the same and store one copy. Perhaps having a mechanism that it would store a per-block checksum in a database, then look for matches by checksum (aka hash) each time a block is written. Hash collissions should be verified with full block compare. Then you could create your restore procedure as a CGI or similar web magic that generates a flar based upon the URL+args provided. That URL can then be used in a jumpstart profile as "archive_location http://backupserver.mycompany.com/flar/...";. A finish script would be responsible for using rsync or simlar to copy the sysidcfg-related files that jumpstart/flar refuses to preserve. FWIW, de-duplication seems to be a hot topic in VTLs (Virtual Tape Libraries). This would be an awesome feature to have in ZFS, even if the de-duplication happens as a later pass similar to zfs scrub. Mike -- Mike Gerdts http://mgerdts.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
