Backups for Linux
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I thought it might be a good idea for people to list what they use for backups in Linux whether it be a server or desktop. As is with most other things, there are a lot of options. I figured it would be better to see what people use in real world scenarios rather than reading a "Top 10" list or something of the sort.
Right now I'm using rsnapshot for a small amount of data (200-300GB) which gets sent to a Synology. We have 10 hourly snaps, 7 daily, 4 weekly, 12 monthly, and 2 yearly.
I also use Drush to backup Drupal sites (drush archive-dump) which saves the sites folder plus the mysql dump. It also gets sent over the network to the NAS. On my linux desktop/laptops I've been using Backintime and a mix of Box.com for some other things.
I'm also signed up for the free Veeam Linux backup once it comes out.
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Did a restore just last night
Our production Linux servers are backed up by Unitrends. -
For Drupal, I use Backup & Migrate module with NodeSquirrel:
https://www.nodesquirrel.com/ - free up to 5GBAll my Linux servers are virtualized, and I use Veeam.
I have one VPS that I backup with Bacula. -
StorageCraft recently went to Linux. They have an agent that does their proprietary block level, agent-based backup from Linux.
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@scottalanmiller Shoot me for asking... but physical machines or VMs? (If VMs, what Hypervisor?)
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller Shoot me for asking... but physical machines or VMs? (If VMs, what Hypervisor?)
Bang
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thud
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Our last remaining physical production system is running VMware ESXi for the moment. Unitrends is backing that up at both the agent and agentless levels.
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@marcinozga said:
For Drupal, I use Backup & Migrate module with NodeSquirrel:
https://www.nodesquirrel.com/ - free up to 5GBAll my Linux servers are virtualized, and I use Veeam.
I have one VPS that I backup with Bacula.Do you like bacula? I haven't had a reason to set all of that up yet to try it.
If I were to take the jump should I do bacula or bareos?
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Uhhhh It's been a long while but I think backing up linux is something like:
sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=4k
edit: this is a joke, don't do the above - it's probably even the wrong syntax
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@MattSpeller said:
Uhhhh It's been a long while but I think backing up linux is something like:
sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=4k
That sounds like a fun time to manage.
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@johnhooks backups are easier when you have no data left to backup
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@MattSpeller said:
Uhhhh It's been a long while but I think backing up linux is something like:
sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=4k
edit: this is a joke, don't do the above - it's probably even the wrong syntax
Even the correct syntax.
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@johnhooks did I actually get it right? I've not used that in ... nearly a decade.
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@MattSpeller said:
@johnhooks did I actually get it right? I've not used that in ... nearly a decade.
Ha ya. Not too shabby.
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With Linux it is becoming common to manage through Chef or Puppet and have little and possibly no data to back up at all.
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@scottalanmiller Only if you're not using the Linux box for a file server, lol.
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller Only if you're not using the Linux box for a file server, lol.
If you are, it is common to only back up the data, let Chef or Puppet rebuild everything but that part. The file server portion can be restored via Rsync or a tarball or other easy mechanism.
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@johnhooks said:
@marcinozga said:
For Drupal, I use Backup & Migrate module with NodeSquirrel:
https://www.nodesquirrel.com/ - free up to 5GBAll my Linux servers are virtualized, and I use Veeam.
I have one VPS that I backup with Bacula.Do you like bacula? I haven't had a reason to set all of that up yet to try it.
If I were to take the jump should I do bacula or bareos?
It's ok for my needs. I still run custom script to dump mysql databases, and then bacula does file level backup. It can be dead simple to set up, or it might confuse the hell out of you. And it's a backup tool designed for tapes originally - I think - but it works with disks. If you decide to try it, use Webmin to manage it, it will make your life much easier.
I've never used bareos, so I can't compare. Its webui looks nice, I can tell it's Bootstrap based. -
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller Only if you're not using the Linux box for a file server, lol.
If you are, it is common to only back up the data, let Chef or Puppet rebuild everything but that part. The file server portion can be restored via Rsync or a tarball or other easy mechanism.
I kind of have the same thing without it. The data is on a separate virtual disk. If something ever terrible happens and I can't recover the root disk, I just restore from a snapshot (either a recent one or an exported one) of just the VM and then reattach the data drive, which has also has the incremental backups if needed.
