On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 3:14 PM, Keith Keller kkeller@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us wrote:
On 2014-05-16, Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com wrote:
The most unique thing about backuppc is that it has its own implementation of rsync that can work with the compressed archive files on the server and a stock remote rsync version accessing the target files. Or, it can use tar or samba to transfer the files, with all duplicate files pooled regardless of the location or transfer method. And it has a nice web interface for configuration/browsing/restores.
One thing I really like about rsnapshot is that you can take the latest snapshot and almost literally drop it in to replace the original. This is appealing to me if, for example, the mobo on the main fileserver dies; I can simply change IP addresses, run the right daemons, and my users are back up without too much data loss and without having to wait a long time for a restore process. Is this possible with backuppc? I don't know enough about how the backend data store is organized to know if this is a reasonable use case.
The internal storage format on the backuppc server is compressed files with slightly munged filenames so you can't quite use them 'as is' or use the usual tools to copy them back out. However, there is a web browser view of the backups where you simply select the backup/directory/file(s) you want and can either restore them back where they came from (or to some other configured target) or download to the browser (single file or tar/zip archive). And there are command line tools to generate tar/zip images if you prefer or want to use an ssh pipeline.
So, you do have to wait for a restore to get usable files but the process is convenient and the tradeoff is that the same disk space can hold a much longer history (or more targets) due to the compression and pooling of duplicate content matched in different locations. If you anticipate needing an instant replacement you might want a separate disk kept current with rsync and use backuppc for those cases where something is accidentally deleted and you don't notice for weeks.