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Linux Backups Made Easy

Posted by michael on from the no-more-tapes dept.

mfago writes "A colleague of mine has written a great tutorial on how to use rsync to create automatic "snapshot-style" backups. Nothing is required except for a simple script, although it is thus not necessarily suitable for data-center applications. Please try to be gentle on his server: it is the $80 computer that he mentions in the tutorial. Perhaps try the Google cache." An excellent article answering a frequently asked question.

1 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. What I'd really like... by MadAndy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This method, like most backup solutions, doesn't take a backup as at a specific instant, but instead takes it over a period of time - the length of time required to make the backup, which can be a problem if the data being backed up is changing all the time.

    A few years ago I saw a neat (expensive!) disc array that could 'freeze' the disc image at a single point in time so that a backup could be taken from the frozen image. The backup software saw only the frozen image, while the rest of the OS saw the disc as normal including updates made after the freeze occurred. The disc array maintained the frozen image until the backup was complete, guaranteeing a true snapshot as at a specific instant in time.

    I wonder whether such a thing would be possible in software. Possibly it can even be done through cunning application of the tools that we already have. I imagined that you might be able to do something like it by extending the loopback device interface. Does anyone out there have any cunning ideas?