[OpenAFS] Some backup advice needed.

[Stephen Joyce]

FWIW, I use the native AFS backup software too.

I do a full for 1/4 of my cell every Monday (user volumes, research
volumes, software volumes, everything else). This way only 1/4 of my
full backups must fit in a 24 hour window.

The other 3/4 of the cell gets a differential based on the previous full
every Monday that it doesn't get a full.

Incrementals occur every other night.

This works fairly well for me using an LTO library, an old, but
reliable, solaris server, and an almost self-aware perl script.  Of course,
depending on the volume of data you're backing up, you may need to split
your fulls into more or less than 4 parts.

I'm currently manually moving the occasional full to another location for
offsite storage, but am planning an automated offsite backup system soon.

For my non-afs disks (ie, OS disks, db disks), I use BackupPC,
http://backuppc.sourceforge.net, for disk to disk backups and highly
recommend it.


One word of advice, don't plan just for your current backup needs. Plan
enough capacity (time, slots, bits, etc) for where you expect to be in 3 or
4 years. Once you've properly designed a system, you don't want to fsck
with it, other than OS patches and security updates, for at least a few
years. There's nothing worse than a system that has to be baby-sat to work
properly or torn apart every 8 months to add capacity.

Cheers, Stephen
--
Stephen Joyce
Systems Administrator                                            P A N I C
Physics & Astronomy Department                         Physics & Astronomy
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill         Network Infrastructure
voice: (919) 962-7214                                        and Computing
fax: (919) 962-0480                               http://www.panic.unc.edu

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On Fri, 21 Apr 2006, Dr A V Le Blanc wrote:

> On Thu 20 Apr 2006 at 11:52:00 -0400, Steve Devine <sdevine@msu.edu> wrote:
> > We use the native afs backup. We currently do a full backup of the whole
> > cell weekly followed by daily incrementals until we cycle back to Monday
> > midnight and start the next full.
> > As the size of the cell (user vols ) grows our backup window is getting
> > way too big. Often it stretches into late Wed before it completes.
> >  I am wondering how many are doing weekly fulls? I am considering a
> > monthly full with incrementals the rest of the month but thats kinda
> > scary if maybe your full is not good.
>
> We split our system into five parts on each server.  Each server
> runs a full dump of part A on Monday, of part B on Tuesday, of
> part C on Wednesday, of part D on Thursday, and of part E on
> Friday, and each server runs an incremental dump everyday of
> everything not included in the full dump for that day.
>
>      -- Owen
>      LeBlanc@mcc.ac.uk
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>
> --
>
>