Mauro Condarelli wrote:
> I have several clients which are generally orthogonal (files in one
> group will not be found on the other).
> 
> I am backing up to removable media (eSATA disks) rotating the disks
> for added security.
> 
> I have a set of identical 500GB external disks.
> 
> Up to now I backed up just inserting the disk and letting backuppc
> take over, then I replace the disk with another and, next time I have
> another backup on the other disk of the set.
> 
> If no disk is inserted the scheduled backup is simply skipped because
> the mount-point directory is not writable by backuppc.
> 
> So far so good.
> 
> Now my total backup amount exceeds 500GB.
> I tried setting two different TopDirs (for different, orthogonal sets
> of clients), but that, as you very well know, fails.
> I do *not* want to have LVM, since that would mean a big hassle using
> removable drives!
> 
> What is the "recommended" way to achieve this?
> 
> TiA
> Mauro


Hi Maouro,

I can think of several options:

1) Replace your 500GB disks with 1TB disks instead. That would buy you some 
time.

2) Use a couple of internal disks combined with LVM. To have an off-site copy 
you could use BackupPC_tarCreate to export individual hosts to external disk(s).

3) Use at least three 1TB disks in a rotating scheme and RAID1.
Say you have three disks labeled 1, 2 and 3. Then you would rotate them 
according to the schedule below, which guarantees that:
- there is always at least one disk in the BackupPC server.
- there is always at least one disk in the off-site storage.
- all disks are never at the same location.

1 2 3   (a = attached, o = off-site)
a o o
a a o -> RAID sync
o a o
o a a -> RAID sync
o o a
a o a -> RAID sync
. . .

An even safer approach would of course be to rotate four disks where at least
two disks are always attached to the BackupPC server.

On top of the RAID1 I recommend that you use LVM even though it is not strictly 
necessary right now if you use 1TB disks. The reason for doing that is when 1TB 
is no longer sufficient you can expand by using an second set of disks in a 
similar setup and add that second RAID1 to the volume.



I don't particularly like 2) because it requires extra work when 
adding/removing 
clients and it requires more storage space. And I prefer method 3) over 1) 
because it doesn't screw up the logs and you don't have to locate a particular 
disk when doing a restore.

Good luck!

BR
/Martin


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge
Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes
Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world
http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/
_______________________________________________
BackupPC-users mailing list
BackupPC-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
List:    https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users
Wiki:    http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net
Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/