From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Oct 6 21:43:56 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7629D1065688 for ; Mon, 6 Oct 2008 21:43:56 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from hartzell@alerce.com) Received: from merlin.alerce.com (merlin.alerce.com [64.62.142.94]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5D7ED8FC16 for ; Mon, 6 Oct 2008 21:43:56 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from hartzell@alerce.com) Received: from merlin.alerce.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by merlin.alerce.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4EF6833C62; Mon, 6 Oct 2008 14:24:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from merlin.alerce.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by merlin.alerce.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id F0FB033C5B; Mon, 6 Oct 2008 14:24:52 -0700 (PDT) From: George Hartzell MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <18666.33296.607120.889620@almost.alerce.com> Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 14:24:32 -0700 To: Bakul Shah In-Reply-To: <20081006184934.04A645B4C@mail.bitblocks.com> References: <48E9E1BB.6020908@ispro.net> <001AD718-D25B-421B-8B0F-CE71FA5A7CF0@gid.co.uk> <48EA21AE.80607@ispro.net> <20081006184934.04A645B4C@mail.bitblocks.com> X-Mailer: VM 7.19 under Emacs 22.1.50.1 X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV using ClamSMTP X-Mailman-Approved-At: Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:06:32 +0000 Cc: hackers@freebsd.org, Evren Yurtesen , Vlad GALU Subject: Re: continuous backup solution for FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: hartzell@alerce.com List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:43:56 -0000 Bakul Shah writes: > On Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:09:06 +0300 "Vlad GALU" wrote: > > On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:33 PM, Evren Yurtesen wrote: > > > Bob Bishop wrote: > > > > > >>> Does anybody have free time and skills to give a hand? Please see: > > >>> http://forum.r1soft.com/showpost.php?p=3414&postcount=9 > > >> > > >> Should be possible to do this with a geom(4) class? > > >> > > > > > > I am not saying it is impossible. They just need somebody to put them to > > > right track I guess. I personally cant do that. It would be nice if somebod > > y > > > who has knowledge in this area contacts r1soft. At the very least r1soft > > > seems to be willing to communicate on this issue. > > > > > > Continuous backups as well as bare-metal-restore seem to be a key feature > > > for many hosters. FreeBSD is loosing users because of this issue. > > > > gmirror+ggate come to mind as a nifty solution ... > > My guess is these guys do something simpler like keep keep > track of changed blocks since the last backup and > periodically dump those blocks to a server. This is good > enough for backups (but not mirroring) and it has low memory > overhead (1 or 2 bits per block), lower network overhead than > remote mirroring (you send a block at most once every sync > interval), and a tiny loss of performance (over no backups). > May be someone ought to do a garchive device! There were a couple of threads about using kqueue or other FreeBSD tools to build something like Mac OS X's Time Machine. R1soft's software sounds very similar. The conclusion seemed to be that it'd be doable. Here's a pointer to the start of one of the threads. http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2008-June/024730.html g.