[K12OSN] Backing up a server...best methods

[Les Mikesell]

On Wed, 2004-11-17 at 11:17, Huck wrote:
> Hrm... Backuppc looks even more juicy than Les led on...
> Looks like it makes backing up an entire network of workstations/servers 
> fairly easy!

Better than easy - it is fully automatic and only bothers you with
email when something fails.  (I've always like the 'no news is good
news' philosophy).

> (once everything is set-up for it)

That part takes a little work - but only once.

> What intrigues me more, is I have a lab of 22 machines(all exact same 
> image) for teaching.
> Currently I build one machine install everything and configure how the 
> teacher needs/likes it...
> then I make an image with Ghost and then push the image onto all of the 
> remaining 21 machines..all at once.
> So about 20 minutes later the lab is complete and ready to go...

It (a) doesn't do disk images, and (b) doesn't multicast so there
would be a little more work involved to do rollouts, but only a
little.  At each target machine you would have to create the partitions,
run an ssh command to the backup server to get a tar image that you
extract locally on each partition, then you have to issue the grub
command to make the drive bootable.  This would all be scriptable
if you didn't have a better tool and had to do it often.  For an
exact disk image clone, I'd probably do a 'dd' of the raw disk over
ssh.  It will take much longer than ghost because it copies all the
disk, not just the used parts but you can go away and do something
else while it runs.

> Backuppc does not appear to do this sort of 'multicasting'. Or am I wrong?
> (is this the 'bare metal' type of restore you were addressing below?)

It can run multiple simultaneous sessions, but each requires its own
network bandwidth.  The real advantage of backuppc, though, is that
you will always have last-night's copy available when you need it.

> But I must say for all of the individual teacher's office and 
> administration PC's this is gunna be HEAVEN.
> Instead of a ghost image for each machine*not done*(or no backup unless 
> they put files on the server where they SHOULD),
> with pooling and compression it looks like less than 40 gigs of space 
> will be taken up for ALL of the windows pc backups =)
> Looks like a couple days worth of work to get it working properly, but 
> after that heaven!

If you can arrange for the web server to authenticate an 'owner' for
each of the machines, you can permit direct access too.  They can
easily grab a copy of files they've accidentally deleted without
bothering you, and users of laptops or machines that are turned off
at night can request a backup run as they leave for lunch or some
convenient time.  If you already have LDAP or similar network
authentication in place you just have to set apache up to use it.

---
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com