[CentOS] NFS vs SMb vs iSCSI for remote backup mounts
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
Thu Jan 28 13:49:00 UTC 2010
Rudi Ahlers wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to get some input from people who have used these options
> for mounting a remote server to a local server. Basically, I need to
> replicate / backup data from one server to another, but over the
> internet (i.e. insecure channels)
>
> Currently we have been mounting an SMB share over SSH, but it's got it's
> own set of problems. And I don't know if this is optimal, or if I could
> setup something better. We don't have much control over the remote
> server, so I couldn't setup a VPN, or iSCSI or anything else. My options
> was FTP & SMB.
>
> But I want to move the backups in-house, to save bandwidth and have more
> control over what we do.
>
> So, with a new CentOS server & 2x1TB HDD's in RAID1 configuration, I can
> do pretty much whatever I want. The backup server(s) will serve backups
> for multiple servers, in different data centers (possible in different
> counties as well, I still need to think about this), so my biggest
> concern is security.
>
> We mainly use cPanel & DotNetPanel (Windows ServerS) , but also WebMin &
> VirtualMin, so I need to stick with their native backup procedures and
> don't really want to use a too technical backup system.
>
> The end users need access to the data 24/7, so having the remote share
> permanently mounted seems to be the best for this, then our support
> staff don't need to SSH into the servers and download the backups. With
> the mount, I can also use rsync backups, so an end user could restore
> only a single file if need be.
>
>
>
> NOW, the question is: Which protocol would be best for this? I can only
> think of SMB, NFS & iSCSI
> The SMB mounts have worked well so far, but it's not as safe, and once
> the SMB share is mounted, I can't unmount it until the server reboots.
> This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but sometime the backup script will
> mount the share again (I think this is a bug in cPanel) and we end up
> with 4 or 5 open connection to the remote server.
>
> NFS - last time I looked at it was on V3, which was IMO rather slow &
> insecure.
>
> iSCSI - this doesn't allow for more than one connect to the same share.
> Sometimes I user might want to download a backup directly from the
> backup server via FTP / SSH / a web interface, which I don't think will
> work. We also sometimes need to restore a backup on a different server
> (if for example the HDD on the initial server is too full), so this
> isn't possible.
>
> The remote shares also need to be mounted inside XEN domU's, or directly
> on CentOS / Windows servers.
>
>
> what would be my best option for this?
Anytime someone mentions backups, I have a knee-jerk reaction to mention
backuppc because it is simple and will likely do anything you need. Docs are
here: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ It is packaged in epel. It can use rsync
(with/without ssh), smb, or tar for the backup transport. Generally for
anything remote, you'll want rsync, and you'll want it badly enough to set it up
even on windows targets - which is not all that difficult.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
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