Michael Conner wrote at about 12:55:58 -0600 on Thursday, March 10, 2011:
 > Thanks to all who replied. You all basically confirmed my feeling that using 
 > our web server as the backup server was not best practice. I just hoped we 
 > might get by without buying another computer, even though it wouldn't need 
 > to be a very expensive one. The only spare computer we have now is an old XP 
 > box with some type of Celeron processor. Maybe I'll use that to set up a 
 > test system, then get a better one for production.

One doesn't need a very powerful processor unless one is backing up
large numbers of machines and huge filesystems. The key limitation is
typically network bandwidth first, disk I/O speed second, RAM third,
and CPU only 4th. In fact CPU is really only used for
compression/decompression (and ssh encryption/decryption if using
rsync). Even a celeron CPU should be faster than you network bandwidth
or disk I/O unless again you have things like a high-end SAN and RAID
system and multiple gigE connections.

On the other extreme, I have successfully tested running BackupPC to
backup up my home office server and about half dozen pc's using a SOHO
NAS with 64 MB RAM and an 800MHz Arm CPU. I also all of the time run a
second instance of BackupPC on a plugcomputer with a 1.2GHz Arm CPU,
512MB DRAM and an external USB hard drive -- that works quite well for
me even.

Of course, at certain scales you need more, but you may be surprised
to find that a celeron box with a RAID1 pair of drives may be good
enough for you seemingly small installation.

 > 
 > One additional question: are there any advantages to any particular flavor 
 > of Linux for BPC?


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