[CentOS] Backup server

[Max Hetrick]

Brian Mathis wrote:

> To put it into perspective, ask the manager how much it would cost the
> business if this data was unrecoverable?  After that, if they still
> don't want to spend a few hundred $$s on the insurance, get it in
> writing that your manager understands the risk and print it out and
> post it on your office wall.

I was just getting ready to say this. Ask how much it will cost them 
when they need to pull something from a backup, that they've 
accidentally deleted and need back.

It really doesn't cost that much to build a small server. I built my own 
using a 3Ware drive cage and 4 SATA drives. I have 1TB of storage for my 
backup server. I think I only spent around $2,000 to build it. I'm 
starting to run out of space now, but we're looking at a cheaper iSCSI 
SAN to attach to this machine to expand on.

At any rate, you really don't have to spend a lot of money to get 
something decent up and running. And even if you spend some, you need to 
explain to management that backups are extremely important. Once you get 
something in place then, it's important to actually test them and check 
on them that you're backing up.

That's what led me to BackupPC in the first place. We used to use 
rsnapshot here, and there were quite a few customized hacked together 
things that we thought were running nightly, and they really weren't. 
So, when I started investigating, I realized that our backups here 
hadn't been taking place for over a month. Bad! So, I found BackuPC to 
replace rsnapshot, and have been happy since then for our online offsite 
  backups.

Regards,
Max