Re: [gentoo-server] Backup software

[Nigel Marsh]

I don't know about better. Box backup means that my clients never have to 
change a tape, store it somewhere off site or even think about their backups. 
we take care of that on the server alone.

It works a little like rsync so large files only have the changed section 
backed up as a patch. It can also be told to work like tape but I only ever 
use it in its lazy rsync style mode.

A few points (in no particular order) that are expanded upon on the web site.
http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup

The data is encrypted over the wire:

The data is encrypted in storage:
clients don't need to trust us not to peek

The compression ratio is fairly good:
The first one I see before me here is a very small business with 23G of data. 
They are using 11G on the backup server.
 
backups occur only when there is data to back up: 
By default the client checks for changes approximately every hour. If there is 
something new then it is backed up or if a file has changed then, the diff is 
backed up. The hourly backup means you get a small trickle of network usage 
rather than a deluge at set backup times.

It uses system raid or will impliment its own userland raid.

After the initial transfer, the data over the wire is minimal:
As all my clients are backing up via adsl links, I do the initial backup on 
site with a clone of the main backup server ( a gentoo laptop with a firewire 
drive ) and then transfer this to the main server.

Recovery is trivial and involves using an ftp like interface on the client.

A native win32 client is currently in the works as is an OSX one.

if for some reason the backup server is unavailable, the client will just keep 
trying every 5 minutes until it is.

A client is allocated a soft and hard limit of space on the server. When the 
limit is reached the files are rotated with the oldest versions of a file 
being removed first.

Old versions of your files are still available unless of course they have been 
removed during the rotation.

Once set up, it is a no brainer. Watch the logs and get on with something more 
important.

This backup server is behind a lowly 1Mb adsl link. It currently stores 200G 
of clients data and the trickle of backup traffic that comes over it doesn't 
even interupt a UT2K4 session.  ;)

Well, that is my situation with this software. If you are interested in it, I 
would suggest that you join the mailing list. Ben is very accessible and is 
very open to questions and suggestions.

I have been using this with my clients now for about 6 months and have not had 
a single problem.

I would like to see a client ported to my zaurus. :)

That may have been a little more than you asked for and I only just got around 
to answering the question about picking something not in portage. 

The install of this is so trivial that I cannot see it being in portage is any 
great advantage. You run the usual ./configure make make-backup-client 0r 
make-backup-server. The binaries are in /usr/loca/bin and it is time for the 
very simple setup.  If I get some time and noone beats me to it I may cut my 
ebuild teeth on this simple app.

Nige.

On Friday 22 Oct 2004 06:56, Ben Munat wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, why pick something not in portage? Does it do
> something better?
>
> Ben
>
> Nigel Marsh wrote:
> > I recently came accross Box Backup and am very happy with it.
> >
> > http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/
> >
> > On Wednesday 20 Oct 2004 17:48, Jose Gonzalez Gomez wrote:
> >>    Hi there,
> >>
> >>    I sent this to the gentoo-user list without much success, I hope in
> >>the server list there are more people doing backups... you know what
> >>they say: "there are only two kind of people: those doing backups and
> >>those that never lost any data". I hope I become one of the third kind,
> >>those that never lost any data but are doing backups :o)
> >>
> >>    I'm searching for some backup software with the following
> >> requirements:
> >>
> >>    * Capability to scale from a single machine to backups of full
> >>networks, including heterogeneous OS (Linux, Windows,...)
> >>    * Capability to do full or incremental backups
> >>    * Network friendly (don't wanna have my network down because the
> >>backup traffic ate all the bandwidth)
> >>    * Possibility of using different backup media (tape, CD, DVD, HD,...)
> >>    * Ease of maintenance and recovery, preferably with unattended
> >>      operation (don't wanna be hanging around changing tapes)
> >>    * Snapshot backups of live file systems (don't wanna have to stop my
> >>      web/mail/database server to do the backup)
> >>    * Ready to go (so please, don't tell me to use tar / cpio / mt)
> >>    * Of course open source
> >>
> >>    After a preliminary search, I've found Amanda, Mondo Rescue and
> >>Bacula, all of them in portage. I would like to hear experiences, and
> >>thoughts about this.
> >>
> >>    Thanks in advance, best regards
> >>    Jose

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