Creating A Restorable backup?

[pccnick]

OK Experts, I need some help. I have just 'inherited' the job of maintaining a fedora based web server for one of my clients. My past experience with linux has been minimal, meaning I can manuever fine, and understand instructions, but I'm limited in my knowledge of "administrative tasks".

Anyway, my question is this:
I need to come up with a method of backing up this server incase something major goes wrong, so that i can get it back up and running as quickly as possible. My client has stated that they are comfortable with 2-4 hours of downtime in the event of this catastrophie for getting them back on the web. My problem is, not only do I not know of any magic program for doing this, I know nothing of this server, nor how it was setup, so I don't know what things are unique about it. Secondly, if at all possible, I can't afford to bring the server offline to create this backup. Ideally, I would like to create a master backup 3 or 4 times a year, and have incremental backups once a week.

Any help, ideas, or instructions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[AnxietyZone]

Ghost for Linux (similar to Norton Ghost ----- > http://freshmeat.net/projects/g4l/

[pccnick]

Thanks for the post AnxietyZone. I found a similar program, that provides more documentation called Mondo, the problem is that i would prefer not to bring the system offline for the amount of time that these would likely require. The ideal situation would be to move the site off of our server, and onto one managed by an isp, making them responsible for downtime, but I'm not sure how easy that would be.

[thesource]

I think it would involve calling the isp asking them to host your domain and moving the content to their site. I would imagine you would tar up the www directory and other directories that have the website content and send it off the the isp. Call them ask them. As far as a backup solution goes if its a business dont rely on a batchfile to backup your website, you need software dedicated to backuping up to do the job. I dont know about mondo or ghostf for linux, I would use ghost to image a workstation and restore it. I have never done that for a server.

[pccnick]

Thanks source...I'm starting to think more and more that moving the site to an isp is the best solution. Would you happen to know if moving a site that uses virtual directories is as simple as moving the Apache configuration info (http.conf). I have never used virtual directories, and am not very sure how they are setup. Anyway, I'll keep looking, thanks again for the help.

[GreyGoose]

Originally Posted by pccnick

Thanks for the post AnxietyZone. I found a similar program, that provides more documentation called Mondo, the problem is that i would prefer not to bring the system offline for the amount of time that these would likely require. The ideal situation would be to move the site off of our server, and onto one managed by an isp, making them responsible for downtime, but I'm not sure how easy that would be.

I must admit that I did a quick search on Google when I located the program I suggested (I have been extremely busy lately, sorry). Had I spent more time, I might have been able to locate a better/more practical solution for you. Having run a Linux and Win2000 server myself (DNS and all), I can appreciate how important a quick and seamless backup is (especially for your customers). Mondo is probably a better solution. Good luck.

EDIT: Yes, I agree. I have experience in both UNIX/Linux and Windows going back to 1984 and yet, I always outsource my needs to another company (leaves me more time for enjoying life and fewer hassles while someone else does all the work).

[Pizzagod]

I would never run a server in a production environment that wasn't mirrored (RAID 1). This gives you minimal downtime, with no data loss.

Depending on the hardware, you may even be able to hot-swap drives, which could put you at 0% downtime. Even if you can't hot-swap, your system will stay up, and you can schedule the failed-drive replacement for off-hours, or at your convenience.

All other backup solutions that I can think of will run the risk of losing data (your backup is only as recent as the last time you ran it). In a medium-high transaction environment, a nightly backup may not be enough. I would hate to tell someone:

"Well, the disk died at the end of the business day. I have last night's backup, but everything everybody worked on today is lost".

[wdingus]

Backup Edge http://www.backupedge.com/ if they feel more comfortable with a *commercial* solution. DVD-RAM is what we use as the physical backup medium most of the time.

Of course RAID-1 or some other form of drive redundancy is a good idea, an offsite removable backup gives a nice feeling of security as well...

[Firewing1]

Hey,
check my sig (the link to my scripts). FWBackups is what you need. Bet en external HD, plug it in, and tell my backupconfig to backup to the dir where you external HD is mounted. On my system, at 1am every day, it backs up my 2GB /home, /var/www/html (webserver), automatically .tar's /etc/ and all subdirs, my /var/lib/rpm, /var/lib/mysql, /var/log, in about 10 min. USB 2.0 rules.

[pparks1]

Firewing,

I gave FWBackups a shot, but I am having some significant problems with the backupconfig app. When I run it, It brings up the menu with the action items, but when I choose (#2 edit backup entries), or (#4 Delete a backup entry), my text window comes back with;
--list-text is an invalid option. See 'zenity --help' for more details
and then the GUI window just pops back up.

Any ideas what is going on? I am running under CentOS 4.2 with php and gnome-utils installed. I am using gnome currently as well

[Firewing1]

CentOS might be why...
Try removing and re-isntalling gnome-utils. Make sure it's v2.10 at least.
If that still doesn't work, then type
zenity --help
and post the result.
Firewing1