Ermanno Novali wrote:
> [...]
> I'd like to mirror the backuppc pool - I searched through ml archives
> and found that mirroring the backuppc pool (wherever it is) with rsync
> on an external hard drive isn't efficient and doesn't scale good -
> i've tried myself and is cpu and time consuming and very very long for
> big pools - not very reliable.
> 
> So i've tried to mirror the pool with rdiff-backup, and it seems a
> little better, but not the optimal solution.
> 
> In this ml the best solutions for this task are two hdd with pool on
> them (two external, or two in raid maybe) or dd form pool to external
> mirror disk - but NOT mirroring the backup with rsync or something
> like that - right? can you confirm that?
> 
> And dd is time consuming like rsync but more reliable for backuppc pool?
> 
> Thank you so much,
> have a nice day
> 
> Ermanno


Hi,

Yes use dd (or even better dd-rescue that is restartable and gives progress 
indication) for big pools. For smaller pools you might use "cp -a" or "rsync 
-aH" (restartable). You have to find out the practical upper limit for the 
latter methods depending on your requirements.


Another alternative is to use at least three disks in a rotating scheme and 
RAID1. (Those of you who have been reading the list for more than a few days 
are 
getting tired of hearing this by now, I imagine...!) 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
. . .

On top of the RAID1 I recommend that you use LVM even though it might not be 
strictly necessary right now if your backups fit on one disk. The reason for 
doing that is when your disk are too small you can expand by using an second 
set 
of disks in a similar setup and add that second RAID1 to the volume.

Good luck!

/Martin


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