Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Are "push" backups flawed?

[J. Roeleveld]

On Tue, November 15, 2011 3:32 am, Grant wrote:
>> You identified a flaw in the system as you were using it. You're right,
>> those are flaws. However, you can " fix" those flaws by applying some
>> magic
>> as a sysadmin. That's why several posts in the thread have mentioned
>> versioning your backups in some fashion. I've mentioned lvm a couple
>> times.
>
> I thought versioning meant that you could roll back to a previous
> version.  rdiff-backup provides that.

It's part of it.

>> I think someone else mentioned pulling the backup target's data to
>> another
>> locale, either via a pull from another server, or via something like a
>> traditional incremental tape backup.
>
> So the systems push to the backup server and a second backup server
> pulls from the first backup server?  Should the second backup server
> use rdiff-backup against the rdiff-backup repository on the first
> backup server?  I think I've read that's not a good idea.

Not sure, I don't use rdiff-backup. Am considering it for the desktops
once the new server is in place.

> What does everybody else do?  I feel like the first person to ever
> attempt secure automated backups.

For more secure backups, you could use backup-utilities that support
incremental backups.
"dar" springs to mind. So do larger automated systems.

As my servers are all virtual machines running on Xen, I configured "pull"
style backups.

For the desktops, I am planning the following:
"rdiff-backup" (or similar) to push backups from the desktops to the
server. Adding hardlinks as already suggested for simple versioning.
The backup-script in the desktop will do 2 things:
1) rdiff-backup
2) instruct the backup-server to create the hardlinks with versioning

Then, at regular intervals, this will be backed up by "pull" from the
Host-domain on the server.

I don't see any chance to kill all my backups as the data will remain,
even when deleting the backup-directory of a desktop.

--
Joost