Optimized Backups for Physical and Virtual Machines 4

Posted by JD 10/08/2011 at 15:00

My old backup method was a little cumbersome. To ensure a good backup set, I’d take down the virtual machine, mount the VM storage on the host (Xen), then perform an rdiff-backup of the entire file system, before bringing the VM back up again. This happened daily, automatically, around 3:30am. It has been working for over 3 years with very few hiccups. I’ve had to restore entire VMs and that has worked too. One day I needed to restore the Zimbra system ASAP. From the time I decided to do the restore until end-users could make use of the system was 20 minutes. That’s pretty sweet in my book.

There are some issues with the current setup.

  • Backups are performed locally, to a different physical disk before being rsync’ed to the backup server. This is necessary because the backup tool versions are different and incompatible between Ubuntu 8.04 and 10.04 LTS servers.
  • Each system is completely shutdown for some period of time during the backup process. It is usually 1-4 minutes, but still that is downtime.
  • Most of the systems are still using 8.04 paravirtual machines under Xen. A migration of some type is needed to a newer OSes. I should use this opportunity to make things better.
  • Some of the systems are running old versions of software which are not up to current patch levels. I guess this happens in all IT shops. None of that is available outside the VPN, so the risks are pretty low.

think I can do better.

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$10 Annual Cell Phone Bill 3

Posted by JD 10/05/2011 at 23:00

Every year I receive a text message on my cell phone reminding me that my minutes are about to expire. For the last 5+ years, I’ve added $10 worth of minutes every October to keep the plan alive.

Just $10/year for cell phone use?

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Addons Enabled - Are You Crazy? 15

Posted by JD 10/02/2011 at 03:00

This month has seen lots of behind the scenes changes here. Most will not be seen by casual visitors. Anyway, I was going through the web analytics and noticed this section concerning the different plugins that are enabled in a browser when they visit here.

78.1% Flash Support
68.8% Java support
61.8% Quicktime audio playing support
58.4% Windows Media audio playing support
49.0% PDF support
09.6% Real audio playing support
09.2% Macromedia Director Support
08.6% Javascript disabled

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