[CentOS] Help with dump/restore

nate centos at linuxpowered.net
Sat Dec 29 06:21:56 UTC 2007


Scott Ehrlich wrote:

> What would be the best rsync method to the local lto3 library (full
> magazine with 12 LTO3 400/800 GB tapes).

What I'd probably do is setup rsnapshot to make snapshots of the
data that you want, and backup the snapshots(rsnapshot utilizes
hard links so only changed files are copied). This way you can
ensure the files being backed up to tape are not being altered.

As for sending the data to tape, my personal experience has been
with BRU. It's not a free software package, the workstation
version is a few hundred bucks. I'm sure there are other
good backup packages out there, I've just been using BRU off
and on for the past 8 years or so, since it's worked so
well I've stuck to it. I can't speak for BRU server, back
in 2001 they came out with the first version of BRU Pro,
which was a fancied version of BRU, and it sucked hard.
I use the original CLI version. Syntax is very similar
to tar. Haven't used anything other than standalone single
cartridge tape drives with it.

My next backup project I plan to purchase one of Quantum's
new LTO 3A tape autoloaders, which is entirely IP-based,
includes a built in FTP server, which I plan to use to
send data to tape from multiple systems, no more tape
backup software. For most of my production/work systems
I snapshot the important volumes on my storage array
(3PAR E200), and then back up the files on separate,
dedicated systems.

nate




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