Advice on external backup of a Linux server.

Bill Gradwohl bill at ycc.com
Thu Feb 10 01:30:19 UTC 2005


Arthur Pemberton wrote:

> What if something goes wrong in the chasis, for example, power surge, 
> all teh HDD's go? no?

We've been in the micro computer networking business since 1982. In all 
that time, I've never seen a power supply fry a drive. I don't doubt 
it's happened, but I've personally never witnessed it, nor have any of 
my employees. I have seen a lightning strike take out a whole slew of 
machines in one shot, but what are the odds of that?

> The prob I have I have with the USB solution is that it requires user 
> intervention.

What user intervention? If you use an external drive, it has its own 
power supply. Just leave it plugged in permanently via its USB cable, if 
what you're after is a "home" solution.

Even for a business, you can script rsync operations to fit X number of 
snapshots on to a single disk, so that you only NEED to touch it every 
few weeks after its filled up with umteen generations. User intervention 
every long while isn't so bad - is it?

BTW - We're getting our clients used to living without tape backups, 
opting for disk based backup solutions in a variety of forms. I mean 
real disk, not CD-ROM or DVD. One client has a box with 6TB of disk 
capacity. Only 2TB is their data. The other 2+2TB is for backup using 
two 12 port 3Ware Escalade controller and a large hot swap backplane. 
Works like a charm.

You can look up D2D or even D2D2T on Google to get some idea of what 
industry is doing.

-- 
Bill Gradwohl
bill at ycc.com
http://www.ycc.com
spamSTOMPER Protected email




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