[CentOS] DR Server for Windows Machines

Fri May 29 21:33:04 UTC 2009
Joseph L. Casale <JCasale at activenetwerx.com>

>Get a port of GNU Tar for MS-Windows and install it and a SSH client on the
>Windows Machines.  Use GNU Tar + SSH to ship the files.  GNU Tar will
>preserve the file permissions.  Once the tar files land on the remote
>(offsite box), unpack the tar file(s) to the local disk.
>
>For the more adventurous, install Cygwin on the Windows machinesand
>then you can fire up a bash shell and do:
>
>tar czvf - -C local-path file ... | ssh remotebox tar xzvf - -C path-on-remote-box
>
>To restore:
>
>ssh remotebox tar czvf - -C path-on-remote-box .|tar xzvf - -C local-path

Interesting,
How I have been doing some files that don't need permissions is using VSS to snap
an SQL and Exchange server (it flushes a consistent state to disc), the script then
exposes the snap to a drive letter, and I rsync the files off the windows box to
the CentOS DR server remotely. Only the delta gets transferred and works very nicely.

Problem is now I need to do this where perms are important for a file server with
~400G of some few million files. I am not sure what you meant about untarring the
files after they land on the centos box? Wouldn't the file then lose its permission
metadata?

The solution uses tools I am already using so it wouldn't be stretch to modify existing
scripts, I am just not sure I follow you:)

Thanks so much!
jlc