backup my server

[sporkit]

hello.

well basicly i just built a new webserver with the works. apache, php, mysql, vsftpd, ssh telent and all that other good stuff.


what it basicly has though is a 80gb hd where almost all of my file and sites are stored. i was wondering if anybody has a suggestion as to what would be an inexpensive way to keep this information backed up.

is it possible to avoid buying another 80gig hd? i wouldnt mind doing like a tape backup thing but i dont know where to start with that.

any suggestions? :D

[techwise]

and many of them are inexpensive or free.

First of all, you mentioned "ssh telnet", do you mean the you have ssh and telnet servers running? Because if you do, you dont need to and I would turn off telnet because of the security risks.

Regarding backups, assuming you have a bare minimum of one 80GB HD and no other storage media, I would run any number of utilities [rsync, dump, tar etc. . .] to create the backup to another directory on that drive. Either in the process of after, compress it the best you can [bzip2]. Then if at all possible, get that to another physical location or machine.

Now you have the basis to start your incremental process to keep the backups up to date.

Personally, I have a similar setup but with 2 drives and the BUps go on drive 2. I use rsync and cp in an incrementally updated directory to do my backups.

The O'Reilly book "Unix Backup and Recovery" is a great book on this topic.

Ideally, you would have an device like a tape drive or CDR/RW to take the BUps off site. Or if you have broadband, you could 'scp' the compressed BUps to an offsite machine.

Good Luck

Mike

[JohnT]

I wouldn't think you would want to backup all 80gb's? I would make a determination as to the files that are irreplacable and backup to a small HD. It's a lot cheaper now days than tape. If your considering archiving beyond backup you might want to look at cd/dvd storage.

[sporkit]

hmm that orely book sounds interesting. dvd might be the way to go but is it possible to burn like that on a unix system with no gui?

oh and i only have ssh running. :)

my mistake.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by sporkit150
hmm that orely book sounds interesting. dvd might be the way to go but is it possible to burn like that on a unix system with no gui?

oh and i only have ssh running. :)

my mistake.

http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/

[sporkit]

hmm, well i was thinking about it and just creating a backup with a bzip2 file sounds kinda fun. i remember they got quake demo down to about half of its original size.

maybe ill even create a bash script to do it for me. :)

although im not to good with compressing files. ill look for a tutorial. :)

[DSwain]

i'm running a small web/ftp/seti server at my house. Though its Windows, the same idea would still work. I guess this wouldn't be as easy because your server sounds much bigger, but what I did was write a batch script which copied certain directories/files i wanted onto another partition on the hard disk, and then added it to Schedual Tasks and have it run once a week. The only downfall really is that if the whole hard disk loses it. Also i don't know if you want to backup the whole server, which would use much more space. In conclusion don't use my method, use a good decent idea!

[afaiq]

Originally posted by sporkit150
hmm, well i was thinking about it and just creating a backup with a bzip2 file sounds kinda fun. i remember they got quake demo down to about half of its original size.

maybe ill even create a bash script to do it for me. :)

although im not to good with compressing files. ill look for a tutorial. :)

I have been using this backup tool for the last few months - it is great, very easy to use. Although, I must say, I use a second 20Gig drive to do my backups and then burn them to DVD media, once a month

http://www.miek.nl/projects/hdup16/hdup16.html