On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 12:06 PM, Rafał Radecki <radecki.rafal at gmail.com> wrote: > I need a block level backup because I need an easy to restore backup of the > whole server, including mbr, partition layout and of course data. The > server will be reinstalled so filesystem level backup is an option but not > as straightforward and easy to restore as for example Clonezilla. > The 'rear' (Relax-and-Recover) package from EPEL is about as easy to use but with a different approach. It will generate a bootable iso containing a script to reconstruct the partitions, filesystems, etc. and restore to them. Some tradeoffs are that Clonezilla will do single disks and bring along windows or other partitions not part of the active system, but can't handle multiple drives or RAID and it needs at least an equal-sized disk for the restore. ReaR can make its backup without shutting the running system down, understands raid/lvm, etc., but only the linux filesystems - and with some work you can modify the disk layout/sizes before the restore. ReaR is a reasonable tool to do conversions to VM's, etc., where you are likely to want to rearrange the layout or remove software raid, although you have to manually edit the layout description file. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com