Return to BSD News archive
#! rnews 1752 sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!agate!usenet.kornet.nm.kr!sun330.snu.ac.kr!usenet From: uytbrian@mail.stardate.com (Brian Uytiepo) Subject: Re: Backups - which method do you prefer? Message-ID: <1995Jul14.205553.17021@news.snu.ac.kr> To: **ALL** Sender: usenet@news.snu.ac.kr (NEWS POSTER) Nntp-Posting-Host: 199.222.19.109 Organization: StarDate Publishing, Inc. X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #3 References: <3tr2te$de0_002@ventura.rain.org> Date: Fri, 14 Jul 95 20:55:53 GMT Lines: 23 In article <3tr2te$de0_002@ventura.rain.org>, noah@rain.org (Matt Noah) wrote: >I am starting an ISP and want to backup a server which will almost >always be "on-line". What backup method do you use? Do you take >the server off-line when doing backups? Methods considered are: > >1. dump/restore >2. tar >3. pax > Use tar and cron to do incremental and master backups in the background, usually during slow or non-peak usage hours. This should give you maximum portability in case you have to restore to any other flavor of unix, plus IMHO, you can find the most plentiful and reliable numbers of file converters and readers for other OS's for the tar format, in case you have to restore to a LAN/OS or NT or VAX format, not to mention DOS or EBCDIC(yuk!). There are also a number of compressed and completely automated background or foreground utility programs like C/tar, Lone-tar, Btar, etc... which can restore your system from scratch in 15 minutes to a reformatted HD or cluster or even a new platform. The question is, are the man-hours(perhaps man-years of time) you've put into setting up your system worth a couple hundred bucks? You decide.