[CentOS] Two Samba Servers and Rsync

[Cliff Pratt]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 8:05 AM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/9/2011 2:50 PM, Railic Njegos wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> I plan to implement two file servers on CentOS 6 i a two remote location.
>> i need to backup all data from second server on first. First server will be a
>> virtual machine on Esxi, and second server will be physical machine.
>>
>> I plan to use rsync to sync data from second to first server. It is OK ?
>> Any suggestion ?
>
> Rsync is probably the best thing you will find for this.  As long as
> whatever you are doing can tolerate the possible differences between
> rsync runs it should be fine. Rysnc normally creates a new file under a
> tmp name, renaming only when the transfer is complete so programs
> accessing the data will only see one version or the other, not an
> inconsistent copy as the transfer progresses.
>
rsync has its own issues. I still use it, but I've learned not to
trust it completely. If you have a deep directory hierarchy and lots
of files, it may run out of memory and crash. I've also had it fail
silently to copy files. In the past I've written wrapper scripts that
break down the rsync into several 'chunks', and check the number of
files on source and target servers at the end. Some people run rsync
and then immediately run it again!

rsync, in spite of its idiosyncrasies is still the best tool.

Cheers,

Cliff