Image/backup

[Ed Wilts]

On Tue, Aug 02, 2005 at 04:23:09PM +0100, Andrew.Bridgeman at corusgroup.com wrote:

I think you take the record for the absolutely ugliest text conversion
I've seen.  Please post to mailing lists in plain text and not html.

> |            We currently have a Redhat machine that is a 24/7 machine and |
> |            is critical to our company. We want to be able to get the     |
> |            machine back to its current state if it where to blow up or   |
> |            something else extreme should happen. Basically we want to be |
> |            able put two new disks in the machine in question in the event|
> |            of a problem and be up a running within minutes. The current  |
> |            two disks are Hardware mirrored so we would need the same     |
> |            info/data/config on two new disks and then they can sit in our|
> |            safe incase of a emergency. One other thing to add is that    |
> |            ideally we do not want to have any downtime on the server as i|
> |            said before it is used 24/7.                                  |
> |            Could anyone please advise in detail on how we might achieve  |
> |            this?                                                         |

One open source product to look at is Mondo Rescue.  It's job is to
write ISO images of whatever it finds and allow you to recover from
those images.  In the event that your hardware changes when you need to
restore, it can even handle these cases.

Depending on what you use for daily backups, some tools have an add-on
that allow you to recover quickly.  NetBackup, for instance, has a Bare
Metal Restore option that can restore your system in very little time.

No matter what solution you pick, you won't be up "in a matter of
minutes" unless your data never changes or you have a very small
subsystem.  

For critical systems, ideally you'll implement a cluster or other
redundant server solution.

-- 
Ed Wilts, RHCE
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program