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On Wednesday 20 October 2004 2:37 pm, Jose Gonzalez Gomez wrote: |
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> I also have this feeling when I read in the mailing list or forums |
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> and see that a lot of people tell you to use tar/cp/rsync/whatever. |
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> That's ok for your home machine, but I don't think those are solutions |
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> for enterprise needs. Just imagine yourself telling your boss or client: |
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> "Yes, I'm gonna have all those machines with your critical business data |
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> backed up using rsync |
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I backup mission-critical data with rsync on a nightly basis on a number of |
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servers and workstations, and have never had a problem. If you're looking for |
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tape backup solutions, you shouldn't be comparing apples to oranges. In the |
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same way, I have a very hard time placing cp in the same league as rsync. |
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I do agree that rsync has its limitations, however there are other similar |
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solutions, such as rdiff, that can provide more robust functionality. |
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> Joking apart, I think Gentoo needs a mind change to become a |
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> corporate distribution and attract people doing real business... just |
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> some thoughts of somebody who's trying to do Gentoo for a living and |
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> would love to see Gentoo in every data center. |
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"Real business" does not equal "support for tape backup solutions". While I |
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can understand your comments in terms of practicality, I don't believe it's |
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correct to widely generalize all fields of business, solely based on your own |
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experiences with one corporation that has a specific set of requirements. |
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There are two primary items of concern that I believe influence datacenter |
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deployment of Gentoo the most: |
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First, having hundreds of machines compiling updates on a nightly basis is a |
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waste of system resources; this would necessitate some type of centralized |
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package management system, which could in turn migrate the updated files to |
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the machines without undue resource strain. The complexity of this solution |
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increases proportionally to the variety of different system configurations |
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that are being deployed. |
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Second, in the case of having a large variety of servers that each provide |
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different network services, keeping all of the configuration files up-to-date |
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would be an enormously time consuming task without some type of automation. |
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This is linked to the first concern, with a number of extra considerations. |
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-- |
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Anthony Gorecki |
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Ectro-Linux Foundation |
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