On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 3:00 PM, Hugh E Cruickshank <hugh at forsoft.com> wrote: >> >> Big disks are cheap these days - I wouldn't worry that much about the >> total space that much and you'll still be able to keep a lot online. > > This is true for current hardware however I am attempting to reuse our > existing hardware that has been pulled from our production systems. It > tends to be older technology but still usable. In this case, it is a > set of disk arrays using SCSI3 drives. If they have a backplane and hotswap bays you'd have to use an external case, but stuff in a sata controller and move on. >> The db's are probably best handled in a pre-backup script that >> dumps/compresses them, then excluding the live files - and then even >> block de-dup won't help. Pst's are a problem any way you look at >> them but more because of Outlook's locking than their size. Backuppc >> is packaged in EPEL so it's easy to install and shows the compression >> and file re-use stats so you'll know in a few runs how it will handle >> your data. > > While all of this is true I was kind of hoping that I could come up > with something that was more "plug and play". If you haven't used backuppc, try it. Other than setting up the ssh keys it is as easy as it gets. There are even web forms where you can fill in the pre/post backup scripts - and you aren't going to get reliable database snapshots without them using any system. > The LessFS looked > promising. I will continue to check this concept out further (be it > LessFS, ZFS, or something else) but I am going to be avoiding the bleeding > edge and can only afford to spend a limited amount of time > chasing this down before I have to bite the bullet and go with what > we have. I wouldn't trust any of the software block-dedup systems with my only copy of something important - plus they need a lot of RAM which your old systems probably don't have either. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com