[ale] Backups (What are you using?)

[Sean C. McCord]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 10:01:19AM -0500, Ken Ratliff wrote:
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> > While rsync is great for many things I probably would only use it for
> > backup in a small home environment if for anything.
> 
> I think it really depends on what you need to do. We use it to backup  
> many many terabytes of webservers and database servers, and it works  
> pretty well. I don't really see the need for a higher end solution.

Likewise.  I manage around 10TB with it, and I have, in the past, looked
at several backup solutions.  Inevitably, though, they are far too
inflexible for my needs/desires.  

As to off-site:  it does not matter to rsync where the backup server is.
The bulk of my data is transferred off site over a DSL uplink...
~512kbps.  Since only the _changes_ are sent, the available bandwidth
does not really matter that much.

I will say that for large file sets, the setup can take a rather large
amount of time.  However, I have never had a problem with it.

For anyone interested, the following method is invaluable to anyone using
rsync to perform incremental backups:
http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/

--
Sean C. McCord