Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 14:06:03 +0000 From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@pobox.com> To: Peter Clutton <peterclutton@gmail.com> Cc: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org, "mike@lanline.com" <mike@lanline.com> Subject: Re: Backup solutions Message-ID: <20051117140603.GA7941@uk.tiscali.com> In-Reply-To: <57416b300511162006m4cfe53f8n6dc2bccb877a5567@mail.gmail.com> References: <Pine.BSI.4.05L.10511161819420.440-100000@mail.lanline.com> <57416b300511162006m4cfe53f8n6dc2bccb877a5567@mail.gmail.com>
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On Thu, Nov 17, 2005 at 03:06:11PM +1100, Peter Clutton wrote: > FWIW, i have read that by far the best is dump, because of the way it > deals with the raw data. No need to worry bout files with holes in > them (with other backup tools, this could mean you may not be able to > fit the file system back on after backup, if there are core files etc) > I believe i read this in the O'Rielly text Unix Power Tools, but could > be wrong. They also referenced an extensive test that was done by > someone, and gave the link. I will post it if i find it. You may mean the Zwicky "Torture Testing" paper: http://grox.net/doc/zwicky/testsuite/torture.pdf My 2 cents: don't judge a backup system by how easy it is to make backups. You should judge it by how easy and reliable it is to *restore* a complete and working image. That's harder than it sounds. If you're rsync'ing or tar'ing: how confident are you that you can quickly build an identical clone machine, with correct chflags() information, and with working boot blocks? Aside: I'd quite like to see a backup system which uses dump/restore, but also uses a crytographic hash of each file so you don't end up storing 100 copies of the same system files when backing up 100 machines. Anybody know of such a beast? Regards, Brian.
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