[BackupPC-users] Offsite copy of backuppc data for disaster recovery

Hi BackupPC users,

I've recently started using BackupPC on the network here at work. I've got a couple dozen Windows PCs and two Windows servers which will all (eventually) be backed up with BackupPC to a Debian Linux box. I'm adding PCs gradually and really like the system. (I'd previously been using a complex array of hand-written batch files and rsync and rdiff-backup.) Everything ends up in the /backup partition of the Linux box.

I'm currently using rsync to copy that /backup partition to an off-site server (it's on a site we own, and the connection is over a hardware VPN, so I'm not worrying about encryption either on the off-site server or en-route).

What I'm wondering is - what will be my restore procedure if I need to use the offsite copy? I've read through the archives, but haven't found exactly the same scenario.

I could copy the files directly out of the pc directories, but the filename mangling and lack of filling makes that unappealing (this is an operation where rdiff-backup shines). The easiest way seems to be through the web interface, but at present I don't actually have backuppc installed on the off-site server.

What it boils down to is this: Can I install BackupPC on the offsite server in such a way that the archive is accessible through the web interface, but it doesn't actually try to do backups itself? I'd like to install it now and be able to test restoring from the offsite server, so that I have one less thing to worry about if I ever need it.

Alternately, does anyone have any other suggestions for dealing with an offsite copy of a complete backuppc archive?

Finally, one message I did find in the archive suggested that I didn't need to copy the pool directory itself. If I could skip this, it would make the offsite rsync a bit faster, and bandwidth is a concern. (Yes, I know I'll be copying the data anyway, but it's a lot less links for rsync to maintain.) Would restoring with the web interface work if the pool directory was completely missing?

Thanks for your help!

Randy

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