Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:50:15 -0500 From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org> To: Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Looking for a Good FreeBSD and General Unix Backup System Message-ID: <20090128225015.GA22170@gsp.org> In-Reply-To: <200901272230.n0RMUsk7035006@dc.cis.okstate.edu> References: <200901272230.n0RMUsk7035006@dc.cis.okstate.edu>
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On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 04:30:54PM -0600, Martin McCormick wrote: > What we plan to do is backup a bunch of Unix systems to > one FreeBSD box and then use a commercial package to back that > box up to an enterprise-wide system we use. The archiver we need > must be able to make 1 full backup of each system like tar and > then incrementals until we are ready for another full backup. The best choice is dump, which was designed and built for exactly this purpose. (tar is fine for archives of static hierarchies, but it is not suitable for full-system backups.) Dump fully supports the concept of full/partial backups in a robust manner. (It has other useful features as well, notably its ability to deal with non-quiescent filesystems in a sensible way.) Excellent backup systems can be built with judicious use of dump -- you don't need to waste money on commercial products. [1] Depending on your specific requirements, it may be desirable to combine dump with other programs you already have (e.g., rysnc, gzip/bzip, scp, and so on). For example, I recently had occasion to build a system which backed up and replicated a multi-terabyte repository across a WAN. Using just the tools already on the system, and about 300 lines of shell (2/3 of which are comments), it wasn't that difficult to meet both requirements and do so in a way that minimized the bandwidth needed. This is really no big deal: it's just a matter of selecting the right tools and combining them -- which is the essence of the Unix philosophy. ---Rsk [1] Every commercial backup system I've evaluated for Unix -- over many, many years -- has produced inferior results. It pains me to watch people waste money on over-priced, under-performing and often-insecure commercial packages when they already have all the software they need...and just need to learn how to use it.
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