[Techtalk] The Ark

[Raven, corporate courtesan]

Heya --

Quoth James (Sat, Feb 23, 2002 at 07:14:04PM -0500):
> We have several web/SQL servers on our network.  What would be the
> easiest to create a system which would allow us to regularly backup
> and save the backup to another server? (I'll call the NFS server "The
> Ark"*)

	I do a similar thing over SSH.  (But then again, my backups have
to be done over an untrusted environment -- the Internet at large.  If
yours are only being pulled over a local LAN, you probably have far
fewer security concerns.)  For me, I set up a backup account with
public-key authentication, the password for the public key saved via
ssh-agent on the box doing the backups, and a forced ssh command that
can only execute the backup script.  The script just .tar.bz2's the
files up and scps them over to my backup server.  It works pretty well,
but took a lot of tweaking to set up in the first place.

	If you're doing incremental backups or something like that, then
you'll want one of the tools more suited to that.  (I just pull all the
directories every time, once a week, which is good enough for my needs.)  
 
> * Because we have the only server room in North America where flooding
> is sometimes an issue :) 

	I bet you don't -- my last company lost four POPS and a server
room to flooding in 1998 or so.  [grin]

Cheers,
Raven

"4, 5, and 6 got me to an old couple who answered the phone, 'Praise the
 Lord.'...8 got me to a number that wouldn't let the call go through. It had a
 telemarketer block on it, so it asked for my name and the company I was with.
 I said "Stephen... Bush... Ravens of the Storm." They didn't pick up... 9 had
 the same block. I said, with confidence this time, "Stephen Bush, Central
 Intellegence Agency." An old man answered this one and when I asked for Raven
 said narry a word and just the slightest harumph and hung up. It was then I
 remember I was calling in and around DC and was doing it with the President's
 last name."
  -- Stef, trying to find my new home number