[CentOS] CentOS Server Backup Options

Wed Mar 14 02:05:18 UTC 2012
Nataraj <incoming-centos at rjl.com>

On 03/13/2012 05:23 PM, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 7:05 PM, Tilman Schmidt
> <t.schmidt at phoenixsoftware.de> wrote:
>> Am 13.03.2012 19:46, schrieb m.roth at 5-cent.us:
>>> Markus Falb wrote:
>>>> On 12.3.2012 01:37, Mark LaPierre wrote:
>>>>> Tape, and tape drives, have a bad reputation.  They are difficult and
>>>>> time consuming to verify.
>>>> Harddisks have a bad reputation too. They fail regulary.
>>>>
>>> Not that frequently.
>> I beg to differ. Hard disk failures are by far the most frequent
>> hardware problem I encounter at work.
> Don't forget to scale that by the number of hard disks you have per
> motherboard - they are probably  also your most common component...
> And in my experience those failures are clustered within the first few
> months or out about 5 years.
>

I would have to dig up some references, but I have read some articles
that claim that the reliability of a drive that is in full time
operation in a server, running 24hrs/day and maybe even seeking under
heavy load is way different than a drive that you run for a day or two
and then it sits in an environmentally controlled storage, powered down
for most of its lifetime.  At least from what I read, the failure rate
is much lower for the same drive used under the later conditions.

Even so, I still choose multiple different backup format.  But if long
term archival is important, I think I would be doing some data
refreshing after a few years of service from backup drives.

Nataraj