BackupPC-users

Re: [BackupPC-users] RAID and offsite

2011-04-26 13:10:02
Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] RAID and offsite
From: Les Mikesell <lesmikesell AT gmail DOT com>
To: backuppc-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:08:22 -0500
On 4/26/2011 11:38 AM, Michael Conner wrote:
> I installed BPC a few weeks ago and have been doing testing and setup since 
> then and have things working pretty well on several linux, windows, and mac 
> clients (ultimately there will be about 15 clients). The server is a Dell 
> 2400 with a 160gb ide drive, Centos 5.6, BPC 3.1 installed with yum from the 
> testing repos. I've added a sata controller and two 2t drives as a raid 1 
> setup, which is what I'll use for real backups. I can't boot off the sata 
> drives, so I boot from the ide drive and put topdir on the satas.
>
> I've done some searching on offsite backups as I would like to maintain at 
> least a recent copy offsite as disaster protection. DD has been too slow for 
> these large drives (I would have to leave it going overnight with no backups 
> running). I may go with periodic archives using the BPC archive function.
>
> However, another idea intrigued me that I saw in an earlier posting. Someone 
> used a RAID 1 setup but only put in the second disk periodically, then 
> removed it for offsite storage. I have three 2T drives, so was considering 
> something similar where I would keep a normal 2-disk RAID 1 setup but 
> periodically remove one disk and replace it with a prior offsite disk.
>
> Not being particularly experienced in all this, I was hoping someone on the 
> list could offer advice on whether this was a good ideal or not and potential 
> pitfalls.

It is working for me, but I use a 3-member RAID1 where 2 are always 
connected and the 3rd is rotated out periodically.  This isn't really 
necessary but when I was first trying it with one internal, one external 
drive the internal one failed, corrupting the attached external, and it 
was something of a hassle to rebuild from the remaining offsite external.

But, note that even though you don't technically have to stop/unmount 
the raid while doing the sync, realistically it doesn't perform well 
enough to do backups at the same time. I use a cron job to start the 
sync very early in the morning so it will complete before backups would 
start.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell AT gmail DOT com

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