SOHO Backups?

[John Abreau]

Brian Chabot wrote:

> 
> 
> Take a PC, add a removable HDD enclosure, and buy a couple extra caddies
> to go with it.  Add appropriately sized HDD's.
> 
> Insert removable HDD.  Mount it. Mirrordir to it.  Unmount it.  Remove
> and store safely.
> 
> Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.

I do my backups at home in two stages, with a third stage planned:

1. On the client system:

In each filesystem that I want snapshotted, I have a .snapshot directory 
at the root of the filesystem. An hourly cron job rotates through eight 
hourly snapshots. Then a daily cron job rotates through fourteen daily 
snapshots. Since the snapshot directories are a bunch of hard links, 
there's no significant overhead in terms of disk usage.

2. A backup server also maintains daily snapshots, rsync'ed through ssh 
tunnels, onto a 250 gb disk in a removable IDE tray. The backup server 
maintains 31 daily and 12 monthly snapshots. Once a year I swap it out 
and archive the old disk. Well, it's been running less than a year, so I 
haven't actually swapped the disk yet.

3. I picked up a tape library on eBay about a month ago, with the idea 
that I'd run nightly tape backups of the backup disk.

-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
ICQ 28611923 / AIM abreauj / JABBER jabr at jabber.org / YAHOO abreauj
Email jabr at blu.org / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0xD5C7B5D9
PGP-Key-Fingerprint 72 FB 39 4F 3C 3B D6 5B E0 C8 5A 6E F1 2C BE 99