Question about backups

[nerbonne]

Currently I am backing up 7 webservers to a backup server using rsync. After the initial backup, the differentials went pretty fast and the system works pretty good. I have the backups set to run nightly. The only problem with this scenario is that it only protects me against disk failures, but does not protect me against file deletions (unless I happen to catch it before the nightly run).

So, my question then, is what would be the best method to retain a weekly and a few monthly backups without copying the entire backup to a new volume (which is obviously impractical due to the amount of space required)?

 

[thedaver]

Typically, your backup that's "newest" is kept uncompressed and on a "live" device for easy access and speed to restore.

From there, your "archival" backups can be compressed on live media, compressed to tape or DVD and stored.

What you may need, for this scenario, is another partition to put a full copy of the backups onto, compress that second copy, and then leave it there or put it onto archival media.

Disk storage is cheap, failure is not. Don't let the price of disks be a barrier to excellence.

And happy new year!

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/