Backup strategy for small business

[darmstadt]

I know a number of companies who use Bacula at an enterprise level on Linux and have no complaints with it. You'll need to sit down and work out a proper backup and recovery strategy, i.e. how often a full and then do you do daily incrementals and so on. Not a light task even for an SME but something that has to be done and then...test, test and test again as you don't want to learn the hard way that the data can't be restored. Yes, you can backup to disk:

Bacula is a set of computer programs that permits the system administrator to manage backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across a network of computers of different kinds. Bacula can also run entirely upon a single computer and can backup to various types of media, including tape and disk.

I do have to admit that for the systems I provide to ISV's I just give them a large USB drive and some scripts which just copies their data although I do implement other more complex solutions when required.

[ProjectManager]

1 TB storage(Dropbox) with unlimited history(all file deltas) is probably less than 100 usd PER Year, I am sure there are other cloud providers that can get you sorted for a few hundred quid. Then any simple script will do, even manual once a week will also do, manual full BKP on Fridays and upload/sync to dropbox over the weekend, incrementals daily would be small so not a big deal to sync over night.

[Yampy]

The last one I done was for a small solicitors office. I installed a small NAS on site to store the backup and incrementals. for the off site full current copy I used a cloud based provider as others have suggested. In this case it was Carbonite. The on site setup used 2 x 3 PC licences of Acronis Truecopy. Job done, works well and the client was pleased at the simplicity. That environment was wintel based, I know that Acronis supports Linux but not sure to what extent

[stek]

Planning this for current clientco though a huge multi - it's penny-pinch-tastic here!!

Decided to backup to local NAS, mkcd/mksysb for AIX BOS, savevg, rsync etc, savewpar (only place ever using Workload Partitions, save on PowerVM VET code cost) to said NAS, and then to cloud, not sure which yet, probably Dropbox but as corporate say we have to get rid of that - some other possibly Amazon thing.

That way I have bare metal restorable BOS from iso from mksysb, restorevg, rsync back, restorewpar, all within a few hours of powering up replacement box, not bad, lead time for replacement box is 3 weeks though so I don't know why I bother.

So trying to source a cheapo POWER6 or something to host somewhere in a DC or other site ATM.

Trouble with Linux is is there a way of restoring to bare metal? I've not seen any other than kickstart rebuild, but would be interested if there are any (cheap/free) ones.

[Contreras]

Trouble with Linux is is there a way of restoring to bare metal? I've not seen any other than kickstart rebuild, but would be interested if there are any (cheap/free) ones.

LVM has a 'snapshot' feature. Not looked into it in any detail myself yet but have seen it being [mis-]used on a client project.

[stek]

LVM has a 'snapshot' feature. Not looked into it in any detail myself yet but have seen it being [mis-]used on a client project.

Yeah AIX has that too, but not sure you can boot from it.

The fundamental core of AIX has always been the BOS (Basic Operating System) all trimmed down with tiny partitions as it should be (root slice .5 gb etc) means the whole thing fits on a bootable DVD-RAM, everything else on separate VG's.

I've seen some sights on Linux (and Solaris to be fair), huge root slices, no way can you create bootable backups from that.

But maybe you can? You could from AIX NIM but obvs not from portable media.

[suityou01]

Yeah AIX has that too, but not sure you can boot from it.

The fundamental core of AIX has always been the BOS (Basic Operating System) all trimmed down with tiny partitions as it should be (root slice .5 gb etc) means the whole thing fits on a bootable DVD-RAM, everything else on separate VG's.

I've seen some sights on Linux (and Solaris to be fair), huge root slices, no way can you create bootable backups from that.

But maybe you can? You could from AIX NIM but obvs not from portable media.

You can image the disks using https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-linux.htm

That is about as bare metal as you can get, but you do have to take the server offline. Good enough for what I need, but obviously Mickey Mouse for Stek's needs.