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