Data Backup solution for Linux servers

sreekumarpg

Hello All,

I am looking for a Linux backup solution for our development servers. The requirement is to backup the linux data to local Synology NAS and then do a local Synology NAS to remote Synology NAS replication. We have tried the rsnapshot and rsnyc but rsnyc is not perserving hardlinks.
Configuration

[Server]/data folder ----> rsnapshot to local /backup drive -------> rsnyc to local Synology NAS.

Now we are looking for a general backup solutions for all Linux servers. The backup requirements are

Daily Incremental backup
Weekly Full backup
Monthly Full backup
Can set Retention period for all backups tasks
Able to restore on day/week/month wise
if possible not have custom backup file extention
Event alert

dafyre

Have you checked out the Veeam for Linux agent yet?

sreekumarpg

@dafyre said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

Veeam for Linux agent yet?
Not yet as am looking for a file level backup solution and also if possible an opensource

Obsolesce

If you have a mix of a lot of servers, or even just a lot of physical servers, I prefer Unitrends over Veeam.

I did not see in your post if anything is physical or virtual, but...

Veeam was designed from the ground up for Virtualized environments (hypervisors and virtual machines). Due to this, you need multiple Veeam products and licenses to cover physical machines in a mixed environment, separate products for Windows physical machines, and another Linux physical machines.

Unitrends does it all from a single point, and supports 200+ OS/Applications/Hypervisors.

Obsolesce

@sreekumarpg said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

@dafyre said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

Veeam for Linux agent yet?
Not yet as am looking for a file level backup solution and also if possible an opensource

Amanda?
Bacula?
FWBackups?

Alex Sage

What Distro?

dafyre

@sreekumarpg said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

@dafyre said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

Veeam for Linux agent yet?
Not yet as am looking for a file level backup solution and also if possible an opensource

The Veeam for Linux will do file level backups and restores.

JaredBusch

@Tim_G said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

If you have a mix of a lot of servers, or even just a lot of physical servers, I prefer Unitrends over Veeam.

I did not see in your post if anything is physical or virtual, but...

Veeam was designed from the ground up for Virtualized environments (hypervisors and virtual machines). Due to this, you need multiple Veeam products and licenses to cover physical machines in a mixed environment, separate products for Windows physical machines, and another Linux physical machines.

Unitrends does it all from a single point, and supports 200+ OS/Applications/Hypervisors.

This is incorrect information. Veeam Backup and Recovery is for Hypervisors. Veeam Endopint Backup is for individual systems. VEB is also free.

sreekumarpg

@Tim_G We have both Physical and virtual Linux Servers

We are using Centos

Seems i can test Bacula

Obsolesce

@JaredBusch said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

@Tim_G said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

If you have a mix of a lot of servers, or even just a lot of physical servers, I prefer Unitrends over Veeam.

I did not see in your post if anything is physical or virtual, but...

Veeam was designed from the ground up for Virtualized environments (hypervisors and virtual machines). Due to this, you need multiple Veeam products and licenses to cover physical machines in a mixed environment, separate products for Windows physical machines, and another Linux physical machines.

Unitrends does it all from a single point, and supports 200+ OS/Applications/Hypervisors.

This is incorrect information. Veeam Backup and Recovery is for Hypervisors. Veeam Endopint Backup is for individual systems. VEB is also free.

What do you mean my information was incorrect? You just confirmed everything I said...

stacksofplates

I use Relax and Recover.

Alex Sage

@stacksofplates said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

I use Relax and Recover.

Since the OP is using CentOS, this is a great option!

http://linoxide.com/tools/install-relax-recover-centos-7/

JaredBusch

@Tim_G said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

@JaredBusch said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

@Tim_G said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

If you have a mix of a lot of servers, or even just a lot of physical servers, I prefer Unitrends over Veeam.

I did not see in your post if anything is physical or virtual, but...

Veeam was designed from the ground up for Virtualized environments (hypervisors and virtual machines). Due to this, you need multiple Veeam products and licenses to cover physical machines in a mixed environment, separate products for Windows physical machines, and another Linux physical machines.

Unitrends does it all from a single point, and supports 200+ OS/Applications/Hypervisors.

This is incorrect information. Veeam Backup and Recovery is for Hypervisors. Veeam Endopint Backup is for individual systems. VEB is also free.

What do you mean my information was incorrect? You just confirmed everything I said...

You are implying multiple varying pieces of software and licensing schemes.

Veeam has exactly 2 products that we are concerned about here.

Veeam B&R for the Hypervisor
VEB for individual systems.

Veeam also has exactly 2 licensing modes that matter.

Free
1. B&R Free is limited in functionality to only full backups, but does work perfectly.
2. VEB is free always
Purchased
1. B&R Purchased gives you a lot of good options, but they are only for B&R and his non virtualized systems gain little benefit from this.

For the OP, a Unitrends solution may well be the best solution, especially if they still offer the product free for users with less than 1TB of data to backup.

You have made multiple posts about Unitrends. Unitrends is a great product, but your bias is showing. Other solutions exist and depending on the specific details, may be or worse.

Dashrender

@JaredBusch said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

For the OP, a Unitrends solution may well be the best solution, especially if they still offer the product free for users with less than 1TB of data to backup.

Here's a question - was the free one limited to 1 TB to backup, or 1 TB of backup storage?

Obsolesce

@JaredBusch said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

You are implying multiple varying pieces of software and licensing schemes.

Yes, there are multiple (and too many) varying pieces of software and licensing schemes needed in a mixed environment when using Veeam.

.....................................................................................................................

Veeam has exactly 2 products that we are concerned about here.

Veeam B&R for the Hypervisor

VEB for individual systems.

I wasn't referring to this specific case when mentioning Veeam's purpose. But here are what typical mixed environments need:

Veeam B&R for Hypervisors
VEB for individual systems (NOT SERVERS (and if you do, you shouldn't))
Veeam Agent for Linux
Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows

For comparison, here's what you'd need with Unitrends:

Unitrends backup software (for all servers)

.....................................................................................................................

Veeam also has exactly 2 licensing modes that matter.

Free

B&R Free is limited in functionality to only full backups, but does work perfectly.

VEB is free always

Purchased

B&R Purchased gives you a lot of good options, but they are only for B&R and his non virtualized systems gain little benefit from this.

You will need 4 licensing models for a typical mixed environment:

Free - VEB (because a lot of people do tend to use it with servers, although that's not what it was designed for, and you shouldn't)
Paid - B&R (for hypervisors - enterprises typically need this in a standard mixed environment)
Paid - Veeam Agent for Linux (needed for physical Linux servers that are not hypervisors)
Paid - Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows (needed for physical windows servers that are not hypervisors)

For comparison, here's the licensing you'd need with Unitrends:

Free - Unitrends Backup (if you have less than 1 TB of data)
Paid - Unitrends Backup (if you have more than 1 TB of data)

.....................................................................................................................

You have made multiple posts about Unitrends. Unitrends is a great product, but your bias is showing. Other solutions exist and depending on the specific details, may be or worse.

I'm not showing bias. I was presenting a possible solution based on assumptions that were missing from the OP's original post. That, if he did have a mixed environment, Unitrends comes to mind first as (one of many) good solutions worth considering. I only mentioned the Veeam thing because that seems to be the knee-jerk reaction when back up or replication is mentioned, typically without any thought going into it. I was just trying to prevent that.

Then the OP mentioned he was just looking for open sources backup for only his Linux machines. That flushes Unitrends down the toilet, where I then mentioned some backup software more specific to his needs.

Francesco Provino

@sreekumarpg
The only thing that hasn't a custom file format is plain rsync/rsnapshot of course. Compressed Tar itself is a "file format".

Rsync can preserve hard link, of corse: I think the option is "-H", but man is your friend.

Francesco Provino

@sreekumarpg said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

Hello All,

I am looking for a Linux backup solution for our development servers. The requirement is to backup the linux data to local Synology NAS and then do a local Synology NAS to remote Synology NAS replication. We have tried the rsnapshot and rsnyc but rsnyc is not perserving hardlinks.
Configuration

[Server]/data folder ----> rsnapshot to local /backup drive -------> rsnyc to local Synology NAS.

Now we are looking for a general backup solutions for all Linux servers. The backup requirements are

Daily Incremental backup

Weekly Full backup

Monthly Full backup

Can set Retention period for all backups tasks

Able to restore on day/week/month wise

if possible not have custom backup file extention

Event alert

There are many FLOSS software that can fulfill your requirements… I'll try to make a selection:

Attic/Borg: python rolling deduplication, very simple to use and extremely simple, sort of evolution of the holy Obnam.
UrBackup: offer commercial support only if you want, nice interface, great features, solid. The choice for SMB, like BackupPc.
Bacula: VERY enterprisey, has every imaginable feature (more than any proprietary product I'm aware of), complex to setup and extremely powerful. Completely FLOSS like the other, offer enterprise support, is widespread in big company. The commercial version also offer a module to backup KVM, VMware ecc in a VM-aware (agentless) fashion, but I've never used the paid one.

sreekumarpg

@Francesco-Provino said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

rsion also offer a module to backup KVM, VMware ecc in

Thanks for the information. I will be testing these solution and will update the result

Thanks all for the valuable advice

theOtherGuy

@sreekumarpg said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

Not yet as am looking for a file level backup solution and also if possible an opensource

Hi, biased Veeam user incoming

Stumlbed at your post and just want to keep things as short as possible.

Veeam Agent for Linux:

Daily Incremental backup - CHECK

Weekly Full backup - nope, however you can leverage scripts to trigger full

Monthly Full backup - nope, the same as with weekly

Can set Retention period for all backups tasks - CHECK

Able to restore on day/week/month wise - CHECK

If possible not have custom backup file extention - nope

Event alert - not out from the box, though post-job script will let you to schedule whatever you want to happen after the job is done.

File-level backup - CHECK (masks are applicable as well)

Unmount NAS directory after backup (security measure) - CHECK

Open-source - kernel module is licensed under GPLv2, CHECK.

CentOS 7 support - CHECK

Free fully fucntional version - CHECK

theOtherGuy

@Tim_G said in Data Backup solution for Linux servers:

You will need 4 licensing models for a typical mixed environment:

Free - VEB (because a lot of people do tend to use it with servers, although that's not what it was designed for, and you shouldn't)
Paid - B&R (for hypervisors - enterprises typically need this in a standard mixed environment)
Paid - Veeam Agent for Linux (needed for physical Linux servers that are not hypervisors)
Paid - Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows (needed for physical windows servers that are not hypervisors)

You, Sir, are making wrong statements

1.B&R - offers a Free version that lets you backup VMs.
2.Veeam Agent for Linux - has fully functional free version
3.Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows - not even released yet and will offer free version as well.