[wellylug] what to back up?

Daniel Pittman daniel at rimspace.net
Fri Aug 24 17:09:08 NZST 2007


nic <nic at tymar.com> writes:

> I have quite a lot to do with a bunch of key Linux servers. I'm not
> quite responsible for them, but I do get asked things like 'what
> should we be backing up?'.

Everything required to do a bare metal restore from tape.

[...]

> What else would you experts suggest? Would you bother with /etc, or
> just take some key files?

Always take everything from /etc -- it is relatively tiny and this
policy will save you when your core application moves the configuration
file without your noticing the changelog report.

[...]

> And if it makes any difference to your suggestions, there is a _lot_
> of capacity on their tape system, so the odd 100 Mb here or there
> doesn't matter too much

Unless they actually /need/ the space just take a bare metal ready
image.  It will inevitably save you to have that extra stuff you didn't
imagine you needed backed up ... one day.

	Daniel

...especially when it turns out that someone saved a million dollar set
of data in /tmp or wrote their huge and costly custom script then stuck
it in /usr/sbin.
-- 
Daniel Pittman <daniel at cybersource.com.au>           Phone: 03 9621 2377
Level 4, 10 Queen St, Melbourne             Web: http://www.cyber.com.au
Cybersource: Australia's Leading Linux and Open Source Solutions Company




More information about the wellylug mailing list