Backup solutions?

[Welty, Richard]

Jon D. Slater writes:
>I don't need any archival on either machine.  My primary concern is hard 
>disk failure.

> so the 
>only backups would be of /home and the mySQL db's.

then you need to have a script that dumps the MySQL dbs
and rsync/rcp/rwhatever the resulting dump file. it's good
to then try and load up the databases on the new system
to prove to yourself that you know how to do that. (MySQL
dumps can be annoying to load.)

if hard drive failure is the dominant concern, you may wish
to consider software raid, or perhaps going with one of the
newer S-ATA RAID controllers. of course, when the motherboard
goes, this won't help much.

it really helps to play out all the hardware failure scenarios
in your head and work out your risk tolerance for each one.

richard