From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG  Wed Mar  2 21:56:48 2011
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Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2011 22:56:45 +0100
From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
To: Ed Flecko <edflecko@gmail.com>
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Fastest way to get an entire FBSD system back online?
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On Wed, 2 Mar 2011 13:50:19 -0800, Ed Flecko <edflecko@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there something similar in the FBSD arena?...some form of "backing
> up" a server so that if a drive fails, upon replacement of the
> drive(s), the OS can be very quickly recovered from a backup (of some
> sort), or from an image, etc.?
> 
> What options are available??? Suggestions???

Other than mirroring techniques, the standard UNIX tools
for dumping and restoring systems partition-wise are
the dump and restore programs. There's a section in the
handbook about how to use them.

Another method is to use dd to make 1:1 copies of disks,
which usually works, but is not very "fine". :-)

I would go with dump/restore and have a custom-made
installer script handy which is executed after booting
the system (e. g. from CD, USB or LAN): It slices,
partitions and newfses the disks, applies labels if
needed, and restores from the .dump files as intended.
This is "fast enough" as it is a very safe solution.




-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...