On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 11:49 AM, xpac <backuppc-forum AT backupcentral DOT 
com> wrote:
> SO, I took this from their Wikipedia page "BackupPC is not a block-level 
> backup system like Ghost4Linux but performs file-based backup and restore. 
> Thus it is not suitable for backup of disk images or raw disk partitions"
>
> Hmmm, just thinking outloud here but is there something open source that is 
> better suited for server backups/restores/disaster recovery?
>
> Or do those that use this find that it is relatively easy in the event of a 
> disaster.  Right now I'm working on implementing something into our small 
> production environment (consisting entirely of Centos servers) and I have 
> BackupPC up and running, just want to see if maybe I should reconsider before 
> we get too far along and switching to something else becomes much more 
> painful.
>
> Any/all opinions are welcomed  :D

Basically you have to have partitions and filesystems created before
you can restore from tar and then you have to make the system bootable
afterwards.  That isn't impossible, but not something I'd call
'relatively easy' or that you want to try for the first time during a
disaster. In general the best approach for systems like Centos is to
understand how to install a new 'minimal' version from scratch, add
the backuppc keys and then restore your data on top of that.  With
that approach it is best to try to separate 'your' data from the
system itself so you won't have trouble with slightly different
hardware or newer software packages.  On the other hand, if you want
something to quickly put something back as close as possible as the
last backup run on fairly similar hardware, look at clonezilla-live or
the 'rear' package in the EPEL repository.   Clonezilla will
save/restore disk image backups but you have to shut down and boot
into it to make the backup.   ReaR will build you a bootable iso image
with scripts to duplicate your system on bare metal and restore a
backup on it.  Several options can be used for the backup itself - tar
to an NFS location is built in.   I don't think it would be extremely
difficult to let the Rear-generated iso/script get your system to the
point where you could restore from the backuppc data but I haven't
needed to do it yet myself.  ReaR does have a point in the restore
where you can edit the disk/filesystem layout which is handy for
things like going from software raid to hardware, or moving a whole
system to a VM.  Oh, and rear doesn't require shutting down to make
it's backup.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell AT gmail DOT com

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