[CentOS] OT: Building NFS server with LVM and snapshots enabled

Tue May 20 15:47:44 UTC 2008
carlopmart <carlopmart at gmail.com>

Theo Band wrote:
> carlopmart wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>>  I need to build a NFS CentOS 5.1 based server with LVM and snaphosts 
>> for disaster recovering to serve storage to three ESX servers for a 
>> development dept. I have 500 GB for storage. Data that I need to store 
>> on this server is 150 GB and can grow to 210 GB to the end of year ...
>>
>>  My questions are:
>>
>>  - Is it possible to do some type of scripting to do data snapshots 
>> every day and then copy to a remote server?? Some example, please??
> Yes of course. I would suggest to use rsync for that, see the example 
> below.
> I have experimented in the past with multiple snapshots a day over a 
> week for users home space. The snapshots gave users a way to quickly 
> retrieve lost data. Drawback is that snapshots tend to slow down the 
> file server (it freezes temporarily to update the snaphot). A temporary 
> snapshot during backup works OK.
>>
>>  - How can I restore snapshot data on the production server if I need 
>> to recover it??
> Most easy way would be to make a snapshot and make this snapshot the 
> active disk. If you need to revert, just remove the snapshot and create 
> a new one from the original unmodified data. But since you want to use 
> NFS, you will have to reboot to free up the snapshot which is not so 
> nice. The other way around is also possible. Just rsync the source NFS 
> disk from the snapshot.
> Again I would only make a snapshot temporarily and use it to make a copy 
> (or sync) to a second file system. This second file system can than be 
> setup with multiple snapshots over time. This prevents the slowdown of 
> the "main" file server. If you need to revert you can use rsync again. 
> (rsync works incrementally so it safes a lot of time if most data is 
> still the same)
> 
> Example script to run with crontab to synchronize multiple volumes to a 
> backup server:
> 
> date +"$0 started: %x %T"
> PATH=$PATH:/usr/sbin
> 
> volumes="vola volb volc vold"
> for i in $volumes
> do
>  # Create a new snapshot
>  # Maximum snapshot size 7G
>  DATE=$(date +%a_%y%m%d_%H%M)
>  lvcreate --size 10G -n ${i}_${DATE} --permission r --snapshot 
> /dev/VolGroup00/$i
> 
>  # Mount the snapshot
>  mkdir -p /snapshot/${DATE}/$i
>  mount -o ro /dev/VolGroup00/${i}_${DATE}  /snapshot/${DATE}/$i
> 
>  rsync -aq --delete /snapshot/${DATE}/$i/ remote_host:/mnt/$i/
> 
>  umount /snapshot/${DATE}/$i
>  rmdir  /snapshot/${DATE}/$i
>  rmdir  /snapshot/${DATE}
>  lvremove -f /dev/VolGroup00/${i}_${DATE}
> 
> done
> date +"$0 finished: %x %T"
> 
> 
> You could create daily snapshots on the remote server as well. I use 
> (incremental) dump and restore for that.
> 
> Cheers,
> Theo

That's what I need. Thanks Theo.


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-- 
CL Martinez
carlopmart {at} gmail {d0t} com