[CentOS] settings up cheap a NAS / SAN server, is it possible?

[Rudi Ahlers]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> Rudi Ahlers wrote:
>>
>>>>
>>>> I mainly want to use it as a backup server for hosting servers, so 
>>>> I'll focus on FTP / SSH / SFTP / iSCSI (if possible), and maybe NFS 
>>>> - I don't want SMB (for security reasons). I'll probably also add 
>>>> Webmin to allow users to browse their backups via HTTPS, manage 
>>>> folders, etc.
>>>
>>> You might like backuppc (http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/) for a 
>>> backup system that will let individual machine 'owners' 
>>> browse/restore their own backups while using compression and linking 
>>> all duplicate files to use much less disk space than you'd expect. 
>>> There's some tradeoff in speed compared to straight rsync and it 
>>> needs more CPU, but the disk savings and ease of use might be worth it.
>>>
>> Yes, Backuppc is one of the programs we'll suggest :)
>
> The pooling won't have the same effect if you run many separate 
> instances sharing the file server.  If you run a single instance that 
> backs up many machines, you only actually store one copy of each 
> unique file and all duplicates become hardlinks to that instance 
> whether the duplicates are found across hosts or in different runs of 
> the same host.
>
> If these are real or virtual hosts you can give their owners web 
> access to only their own host's backups.  If you have virtual web 
> sites on the same host you have to go through some contortions to 
> split control but it is still possible.
Yes, I realize that, but it would save space for those hosts who have 
more than 1 copy of the same file. Each account on the backup server 
will belong to one host / reseller / VPS  owner.
>
>> But it will also be used for Linux control panels like cPanel, Plesk, 
>> Webmin, etc which use traditional FTP backup (via local LAN only).
>
> And those won't have any pooling.
I'm not too concerned about this :)

-- 

Kind Regards
Rudi Ahlers
CEO, SoftDux

Web:   http://www.SoftDux.com
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