Comments on: Insurance and backups love to be hated http://www.alexwilliams.ca/blog/2007/01/17/insurance-and-backups-love-to-be-hated/ High-Availability Guru Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:42:14 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Alex http://www.alexwilliams.ca/blog/2007/01/17/insurance-and-backups-love-to-be-hated/comment-page-1/#comment-14 Alex Thu, 18 Jan 2007 03:47:12 +0000 http://www.alexwilliams.ca/blog/2007/01/17/insurance-and-backups-love-to-be-hated/#comment-14 Wow that seems like a great solution! I travel a lot and carrying a dedicated backup machine is definitely not feasible, although I would look into that if/when I move into a studio space with my team (if/when I have a team) ;) As I mentioned earlier, automation is the key to proper backups. Do it often and do it well. Thanks for posting! Wow that seems like a great solution!

I travel a lot and carrying a dedicated backup machine is definitely not feasible, although I would look into that if/when I move into a studio space with my team (if/when I have a team) ;)

As I mentioned earlier, automation is the key to proper backups. Do it often and do it well.

Thanks for posting!

]]> By: bjhess http://www.alexwilliams.ca/blog/2007/01/17/insurance-and-backups-love-to-be-hated/comment-page-1/#comment-13 bjhess Wed, 17 Jan 2007 14:29:10 +0000 http://www.alexwilliams.ca/blog/2007/01/17/insurance-and-backups-love-to-be-hated/#comment-13 I use <a href="http://www.rsnapshot.org/" rel="nofollow">rsnapshot</a> to backup my critical data, both personal documents and "job stuff." I put together a machine with old parts (talking 366MHz Celeron machine) and a big hard drive, loaded Ubuntu server on it and dedicated the machine to backup. Rsnapshot goes out on the network and pulls data in once per day, making incremental-like backups. I then shared the "snapshots" area to my network and I can see the state of my data for each day in the past week, each week in the past month, each month in the past quarter, and each quarter in the past year. It's excellent. (Rsnapshot was a little easier to setup because I have all my data on another Ubuntu box, so it's grabbing everything from a Linux machine. I didn't mess with pinging OSX or Windows boxes.) I can't really imagine a better solution then one in which there is absolutely no required manual processes. Manual processes will almost unanimously assure failure at some point in time. I have further protections I won't get into. Think "backup the backup." These protections are manual. Guess what I've been remiss on for the past few months? I use rsnapshot to backup my critical data, both personal documents and “job stuff.” I put together a machine with old parts (talking 366MHz Celeron machine) and a big hard drive, loaded Ubuntu server on it and dedicated the machine to backup.

Rsnapshot goes out on the network and pulls data in once per day, making incremental-like backups. I then shared the “snapshots” area to my network and I can see the state of my data for each day in the past week, each week in the past month, each month in the past quarter, and each quarter in the past year. It’s excellent. (Rsnapshot was a little easier to setup because I have all my data on another Ubuntu box, so it’s grabbing everything from a Linux machine. I didn’t mess with pinging OSX or Windows boxes.)

I can’t really imagine a better solution then one in which there is absolutely no required manual processes. Manual processes will almost unanimously assure failure at some point in time. I have further protections I won’t get into. Think “backup the backup.” These protections are manual. Guess what I’ve been remiss on for the past few months?

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