Re: [PLUG] Solaris backup/restore

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 3:22 PM,  <bergman@merctech.com> wrote:
> Mirroring with higher-level tools (rsync, unison, etc.) is likely to cause
> issues when it comes time to use the "backup".

I'd expect that to not even work with linux.  You're missing boot
sectors/partition-tables/etc.

> Mirroring the boot drive via "dd" has a reasonably high chance of success,
> and will provide an accurate, bit-level copy of any corrupted data. If
> both the boot & mirror drive are permanently installed in the same server,
> then they are both subject to the same events (power surge, water, fire,
> etc.) that would require the use of a backup. In my book, a single image
> copy is not a reliable "backup" scheme.

My impression is that their backup strategy was to plug a hard drive
in, mirror an existing drive using dd or some other tool (I suggested
clonezilla), and then remove the drive and store it offsite.

I think that sounds incredibly painful, but I can't see any reason
that it wouldn't work.  You're trading a lot more effort and downtime
during backups for the possibility of a near-instant recovery later
(well, as instantly as you can recover the backup media).

That said, it might make more sense to just store the data in image
files which could be transmitted electronically.  Recovery would take
longer in the sense that you'd have to restore the data, but it would
take less time in that you could potentially retrieve the data over a
network.  You'd still have lots of downtime due to the need for
offline backups.

Online backups will generally require you to rebuild the OS at some
level as they are at the file level.  However, they would not require
downtime to perform the backup.

Rich
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