Les Mikesell wrote:
> Peter Walter wrote:
>   
>> Jim Leonard wrote:
>>     
>>> Peter Walter wrote:
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> I have access to "cloud storage" I would like to take 
>>>> advantage of, but can't because of the hardlink issue. My (klugey) 
>>>> solution at present is to use a backuppc server to backup the backuppc 
>>>> server, but even incrementals take days to run.
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> What is the problem with your cloud storage such that you can't use it 
>>> to make a backup of BackupPC?  What cloud storage do you have access to, 
>>> and what operating system and filesystem are you using to run BackupPC?
>>>   
>>>       
>> I have not (yet) come across a cloud storage provider who supports 
>> hardlinks. The specific provider I was talking about is rsync.net.
>> For all the backuppc servers I (currently) administer, the OS is Centos 
>> 5.x, and the filesystem is ext3.
>>     
>
> Is there a limit to the file size?  Why not put an image copy of your archive 
> filesystem in a file?  Or for an interesting variation, make a vmware vmx 
> virtual disk split into 1 or 2 gig file segments locally, image copy to that, 
> then rsync the segments off somewhere else.  If you are lucky, there won't be 
> changes in all the segments on every run and by splitting it you greatly 
> reduce 
> the workspace needed by rsync as it constructs a new copy of each file before 
> deleting the old one.   But can you live with the time it would take to copy 
> your data back from cloud storage if you ever need it?
>
>   
My objective is to administer a secondary backup server (for 
second-level disaster recovery) which is dedicated to backing up primary 
backup servers, where the primary backup servers are in seperate 
domains, and the backup targets are only accessible by the primary 
backup server for the domain. I selected backuppc for the primary backup 
server because I like the pooling feature very much - in my environment, 
the primary backup servers back up a mixed load of Windows / Linux / OSX 
servers and workstations, and I have found that the pooling feature cuts 
down a lot of the resources (bandwidth, space) required. In addition, 
from my own observations, and from reading the comments on this site, 
backuppc is *very* reliable and fairly easy to use. I suspect that I 
will find that there exists a lot of redundancy within the files created 
by the primary backup servers, and therefore I wished to take further 
advantage of the pooling mechanism by using backuppc to backup backuppc 
servers. Yes, there are a variety of other techniques I could use, such 
as image copies, to back up a backuppc server, and I may end up using 
them. What I don't understand is why such a great backup system such as 
backuppc cannot reasonably be used to backup itself - it seems to me 
that since backuppc "knows" it's own architecture, a way could be found 
to do it efficiently. Since my objective is to do second-level disaster 
recovery, allowing a day or two to restore a backuppc machine would work 
for me - since the original hardware and the targets that were backed up 
would have probably been destroyed in the disaster anyway, operations 
may need to be moved to another site, etc. I think the locations within 
which I have installed backuppc would be willing to wait for five days 
for full functionality to be restored - meaning, the primary backup 
machine being recreated, and the targets of the primary backup machine 
being restored. Since, as I understand it, the hardlink usage in 
backuppc is the primary reason why rsync cannot efficiently backup a 
backuppc machine, I would be satisfied if the hardlinks were dumped 
seperately, and a way to reconstitute them provided, with the pool(s) 
being backed up as normal.

If a solution like that is not feasible, then I will have to consider 
image copies of one sort or another of the primary backup servers. 
However, there probably will be a limit to how many image copies could 
be done in a day. With backuppc, as I understand it, the configurable 
interval between incrementals and the pooling mechanism would allow me 
to more or less continuously backup the primary backup servers.

If I have misunderstood anything about how backuppc could work in the 
environment I suggest, please let me know.

Peter

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