[Bio-linux] Backing Up

[Nicolas Bertrand]

Kerr,

Here are some of the questions that will need to be addressed

1. What will you backup?
In the case of a bio-linux clone, you probably want to backup soley home The OS can be restored using system imager (minus any system-wide changes you may have done.)

2. When?
A Full weekly backup of home and daily incrementals would be reasonable. 

3. How?
Medium 
DLT Type IV Tapes (4000 and 8000 models)
Drive 
DLT-2000 15Gb/30Gb (~$700)
DLT-4000 20Gb native / 40Gb compressed (Max) (~$1000)
DLT-8000 40Gb native /80Gb compressed (~$2000)

Software: 
Open source: Amanda (http://www.amanda.org/) available as an rpm. No experience configuring it, though... 

Closed source software:
e.g. CA Arcserve (have not tested this to backup linux), 
Veritas netbackup (v 3.41 does not work very well with Linux clients) ,
Legato Networker (Supposed to work great with Linux. In the process of being implemented here. Very costly.

Firstly, it may be worth checking with your department/univ. if they have a central backupp facility and if they would be happy to accomodate your backup requirements.

If you decide/have to create do backups to tapes on your own, you will have to make sure the backups gets stored in  safe place (in a data grade firesafe locally) and that the tape drive is not in a public location (If somebody gets hold of your tapes, your data is fully accessible to them (regardless of file permission and so on!!!)

Nicolas


-------------------------------------------------------------------
Nicolas Bertrand
CEH Oxford,
Mansfield Road
Oxford OX1 3SR
Tel: 01865 281 658
Fax: 01865 281 696
email: nsb at ceh.ac.uk
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>>> Milo Thurston <mith at ceh.ac.uk> 11/13/02 09:40am >>>
In message <B9F75223.741D%pkerrwall at psu.edu> you wrote:
>What type of hardware should I purchase and do you have any example scripts
>for such a task?

The cheapest and simplest backup setup is to use dump to store compressed images
of each partition onto a large partition on another disk. I have a couple of machines
containing two disks for this purpose, but it's also possible to dump across the network
using ssh. I can supply a couple of simple scripts to do this, if anyone wants.
This system is cheap and simple for one machine, but does not protect against some sorts
of data loss (theft and fire, for example).
For more elaborate and robust solutions involving tapes, Nicolas will hopefully answer...
Milo.

--
Dr. Milo Thurston, CEH Oxford, Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3SR.
'phone 01865 281658,  fax 01865 281696.
http://www.bioinf.ceh.ac.uk/lab/ 
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