[Techtalk] seeking backup solution recommendations

[Maria Sund]

On Sat, 2020-11-28 at 09:52 -0800, Meryll Larkin wrote:
> Hi Systers,
> 
>  
> 
> I'm searching online too, but I thought emailing this list might help
> me as
> some of you probably have experience with different backup solutions.
> 

I like to hear comments, too. I have found rsnapshot reliable and it is
easy to restore data. Can restore single files, or whole directory
using rsync. At least it was working this way with my systems. I have
similar system here, my internal LAN, and so on. This works fins when
is Linux, Do not know with other OS. Bacula for example was too
complicated for our systems. 

@@ Maria

> 
> The environment that I am backing up has the following features:
> 
> 1.      Only Linux servers in the LAN- no other OS.
> 
> 2.      Only ONE DIRECTORY really requires backup.  That directory is
> 140 T
> in size, but currently contains 25 T of data.  That could double over
> the
> next 4 years, not sooner.
> 
> 3.      Some of the files in that one directory are 20G in size, and
> they
> could get larger.
> 
> 4.      We have a tape drive - which we have been using to make
> backups
> using "tar".  That has reached its useful limit with those large
> files.
> The tapes hold about 12T of uncompressed data, each.  We have several
> tapes.
> We have never gotten the "Autoloader" feature to work on the tape
> drive, but
> we can move the tapes manually, remotely.  I'm smart about selecting
> pieces
> to backup that fit on each tape.
> 
> 5.      We have an internal DNS server for the LAN only, I mention
> this
> because I remember a decade ago some backup solutions needed to use
> server
> names and have reverse lookup.  We can do that.
> 
> 6.      We don't currently have email going in or out of the
> LAN.  The email
> sits in /var/spool/mail.  So what that means is that if there is a
> GUI
> dashboard, the GUI will need to display errors.  It would be helpful
> to be
> able to see errors some way OTHER than email notifications.  Okay if
> I need
> to use command line to pull them.
> 
> 7.      This is ALSO our backup and recovery plan so it is IMPORTANT
> that
> Restores can be done from storage media EVEN IF the original server
> that
> created the backup is destroyed.  In other words, I need to be able
> to make
> a new server, install the backup software, and restore to new
> hardware.  
> 
> I'm mentioning this because I think SOME encryption algorithms
> prevent the
> ability to restore from non-original backup software install.
> 
>         I manually retrieve tapes with backups on them so they can be
> stored
> off-site.
> 
> 8.      Nice to have:  Speed at backing up - because folks using the
> resources don't like to have their processes slowed nor access denied
> for
> very long.
> 
> 9.      Nice to have: Granular Restores
> 
>  
> 
> Suggestions?  Ideas?
> 
> I'd like to hear about BOTH solutions that FIT my criteria AND if you
> know
> solutions that DON'T (so I don't waste my time in my online
> research).
> 
>  
> 
> TIA,
> 
> Meryll Larkin
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
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