[ale] Turn-key backup software

[DJ-Pfulio]

BTW - my daily backup report just arrived ... for a feel of the tiny amount of
change data (Sunday) and runtime for each backup:

=== Time for Backups to spamcache ===
StartTime 1442812205.00 (Mon Sep 21 01:10:05 2015)
EndTime 1442812212.89 (Mon Sep 21 01:10:12 2015)
ElapsedTime 7.89 (7.89 seconds)
TotalDestinationSizeChange 279 (279 bytes)


=== Time for Backups to lubuntu ===
StartTime 1442812506.00 (Mon Sep 21 01:15:06 2015)
EndTime 1442812835.17 (Mon Sep 21 01:20:35 2015)
ElapsedTime 329.17 (5 minutes 29.17 seconds)
TotalDestinationSizeChange 23306727 (22.2 MB)


=== Time for Backups to hadar ===
StartTime 1442813709.00 (Mon Sep 21 01:35:09 2015)
EndTime 1442813718.01 (Mon Sep 21 01:35:18 2015)
ElapsedTime 9.01 (9.01 seconds)
TotalDestinationSizeChange 66036 (64.5 KB)


=== Time for Backups to romulus ===
StartTime 1442814306.00 (Mon Sep 21 01:45:06 2015)
EndTime 1442814491.26 (Mon Sep 21 01:48:11 2015)
ElapsedTime 185.26 (3 minutes 5.26 seconds)
TotalDestinationSizeChange 148460 (145 KB)


=== Time for Backups to xen41 ===
StartTime 1442815513.00 (Mon Sep 21 02:05:13 2015)
EndTime 1442815604.02 (Mon Sep 21 02:06:44 2015)
ElapsedTime 91.02 (1 minute 31.02 seconds)
TotalDestinationSizeChange 2173517 (2.07 MB)


On 09/21/2015 06:06 AM, DJ-Pfulio wrote:
> http://blog.bacula.org/
> I don't use it. Found it too complex to setup.
> 
> I've been using rdiff-backup for about 7 years now, but not on Windows. For
> Windows, I find a mix of quarterly images and nightly rsync push for just data
> to a Linux box is the least evil. That rsync-area gets rdiff-backup'd with
> versioning.
> https://www.kirya.net/articles/backups-using-rdiff-backup/ - nice how-to. Of
> course, you'll need to quiesce any DBs to get non-corrupted backups of those
> files.  Or use LVM and a snapshot during backups.
> 
> rdiff-backup commands are very similar to rsync, but provide so much more of
> what you need from a backup - versioning, efficient storage, easy restores from
> 1, 4, 6 weeks ago. The backup files are easy to restore without using
> rdiff-backup. Nothing is in a proprietary or difficult format. Backups are
> reverse-differential from the most recent backup. That means the backup from 2am
> today, looks like a mirror of the file system. If I look at the backup files for
> a week ago, a month ago, only a few files will be there - they are dependent on
> the intermediate backups from 2am ... back to that date.
> 
> If you need encryption, the normal answer is duplicity. I hate, hate, hate the
> old-school backup storage methods they use. Weekly "fulls", daily incrementals.
>  rdiff-backup only has 1 "full" the first backup. Everything after that is
> incremental.
> 
> Some high-risk systems get 120 days of backups. Because only the files needed to
> recreate the system are saved, like an email gateway system - the entire 120
> days of backups is under 100MB of storage. The system is only settings and
> doesn't have **any** data. Other systems that are full of data are much larger.
> 
> For a few years, I backed up about 20 VMs using rdiff-backup.  All of those only
> required 500G of storage - not worth a tape drive. I do not backup the entire
> OS, just everything necessary to put the OS back to the same config, programs,
> within 30-45 minutes.
> 
> Also - not all data is treated the same here.  Music and other media files that
> do not change don't need versioning. A simple rsync is used for those. Home and
> /etc/ directories DO need versioning - those use rdiff-backup. I'm careful to
> **never** install programs outside a package manager, so by keeping a list of
> installed programs (regenerated daily pre-backup), reinstalling those is trivial.
> 
> Lastly, I avoid having any data on Windows that can be avoided. Don't use
> Windows for much "critical" stuff. Quicken data is about it and the data files
> are in the nightly rsync to a Linux machine and backed up with versioning. Plus
> the Quicken backup files are written directly to Linux storage at program
> shutdown. I find life to be easier this way and the liability of Windows is
> minimized.
> 
> I sleep well (and I'm a morning person), clearly. ;)
> 
> 
> On 09/21/2015 04:00 AM, Alan Hightower wrote:
>>  
>>
>> I'm in need of a backup solution. 
>>
>> First, most of my personal data I can't stand to lose I rsync across
>> several servers at three physical locations nightly. I also manually
>> push it to cloud based cold storage occasionally. But I don't currently
>> version that data beyond the few source code repositories contained
>> within. All of my data, both critical and non, is kept on live storage
>> that is RAID 6 or better. Recently with the growing proliferation of
>> cyptolocker variants, DoS attacks and penetration probes on my machines,
>> etc, I have realized the work involved in replacing the non-critical
>> data is just as significant and the risk of malicious damage just as
>> real. 
>>
>> I just picked up a free LTO-4 Ultium SAS drive from an enterprise
>> upgrade and am looking to start keeping routine full, diff, and
>> incremental off-line tape copies just in case. I have two Linux boxes
>> (one rsync'd to the other nightly) and a Windows 7 workstation I need to
>> natively back-up. And I am willing to pay a few hundred dollars for a
>> commercial solution if it is pretty much turn-key and well supported
>> when a disaster happens at 4am. Does anyone have any recommendations on
>> FOSS or budget commercial software that would support both client OSs, a
>> 2 node install, fairly easy to use, and not ultra-finicky about
>> distributions? (I'm running FC21 atm). 
>>
>> Thanks in advance, 
>>
>> -Alan H. 
> 
>