Server Fault Stack Exchange
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Questions tagged [backup]

Making copies of data so that the copies may be used to restore the original after a data loss event, or for historical retention.

3959 questions
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LVM snapshots as a backup strategy

How viable as a backup strategy would be periodical LVM snapshots of xen domU's? Pros, cons, any gotchas? To me it seems like the perfect solution for a fast, brainless restore. Any investigation could take place on the broken logical volume with…
Karolis T.
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Is there a good way to backup a petabyte of data and store it?

I'm starting to see clients with hundreds of terabytes of data (in SQL Server installations). As the total volume of data in some enterprises approaches meaningful fractions of a petabyte, I'd like to canvas the collective knowledge base out there…
Paul Randal
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Should a backup server use RAID?

I was asked to set up a new backup server using Symantec Backup Exec that stores to hard disk instead of tape, because the backup size is outgrowing tape capacity. I was wondering does it really make sense or are there any advantages for the backup…
easyappl
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How do you apply development practices like version control, testing and continuous integration/deployment to system administration?

Imagine you're going to manage a number of servers with a number of different services that's used by a number of people. Now say you want to reconfigure or replace some software on one of those servers. Obviously you don't want to work on servers…
arex1337
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Any need to make backup of data on Amazon S3?

I'm hosting 200 GB of product images at S3 (this is my primary file host). Do I need to back that data up somewhere else, or is S3 safe as it is? I have been experimenting with mounting the S3 bucket to a EC2 instance, and then making a nightly…
Chrille
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Which is better for website backup - rsync or git push

I run 2 LAMP web servers at different providers for disaster recovery purposes - a high powered live server, and a low powered backup server. Currently I rsync all the data from the live server to the backup server once every 4 hours. This works ok,…
David Laing
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From bad sector to "damaged file" - did it for Linux/ext3, can I do it for Windows/NTFS?

When a SMART check on a disk reports a bad sector, it is important to be able to identify the file that has the bad sector - and restore it from backups. Below, I show how I did this for my Linux/ext3 VMWARE server - but does anyone know if this can…
ttsiodras
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How can I copy a VHD image back to a physical disc?

It's quite easy to backup a real drive to VHD, e.g. with Sysinternal's Disk2VHD on XP or with Windows Image Backup on Windows 7. But how do I copy that file back? It's possible by booting a recovery CD or the Windows installation DVD. But can it…
Christian
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Encrypted Remote Backups via Rsync?

I run a small modest CentOS server at my house for misc backups, etc. My friend on the other side of town also runs a small modest server at his house for similar purposes. We have been toying with the idea of using eachothers servers to do…
Jake Wilson
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How do I backup a mysql database, but at low priority?

I want to backup a database, but during the day when there is load on the server. It's vital that the backup doesn't impact apache and other databases running on the same server. It should be possible to use the mysqldump command, but run the…
andyuk
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Is there a working Linux backup solution that uses inotify?

It takes forever to back up. Before we can trust btrfs or ZFS to backup incremental snapshots, wouldn't it be nice if there was a daemon that used inotify to keep track of which files had actually changed so backups would run more quickly? Where is…
joeforker
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Encrypted offsite backups - where to store the encryption key?

In addition to regular onsite backups (kept in a fire resistant safe), we also send tapes offsite once a month, encrypted with AES. So if our site is one day vaporised by an alien heat ray, we should at least have one recent backup to recover…
Todd Owen
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What security risks are there with employees using Dropbox?

Are there any particular security concerns to keep in mind with company-wide use of Dropbox file sharing / versioning / backing up, and are there specific options or settings that would be recommended to limit the risk?
davebug
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For large files compress first then transfer or rsync -z? which would be fastest?

I have a ton of relativity small data files but they take up about 50 GB and I need them transferred to a different machine. I was trying to think of the most efficient way to do this. Thoughts I had were to gzip the whole thing then rsync it and…
None
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Tape encryption management & best practices

I want to enable encryption on all of my backup tapes. I more-or-less know how to do this technically, but the procedural and human elements of implementing this are tricky. I use HP LTO4 drives with bacula, which doesn't have any key-management…
lukecyca
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